


A Lipless Face That I Want to Marry

by Professional_Creeper



Series: A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Crispy Husband, Dom Dr. Frederick Chilton, Dom/sub, Engagement, Established Relationship, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fingerfucking, Gender-neutral Reader, Heavy Angst, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Insecurity, M/M, Medical Procedures, Other, Post-Canon, Scars, Shibari, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper
Summary: Frederick Chilton struggles to recover after being bitten and burned alive by the Red Dragon. Even with you by his side, it is a painful process that leaves the already grumpy psychiatrist bitter and angry.If he manages to survive... will your relationship?
Relationships: Dr. Frederick Chilton/Reader
Series: A Punchable Face That I Want to Kiss [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912681
Comments: 38
Kudos: 66





	1. Hospital Rooms

**Author's Note:**

> If you're starting here, the first part of the series is Hannibal s2 - s3, but Dr. Chilton finds love off camera. Now you're caught up!

He seemed fine that first day—as fine as anyone could be after surviving what he had. His skin was red and cracked from being set on fire, and both his lips had been violently torn off—but they had found him in time. He was in the hospital recovering. Talking. You were able to speak with him, and reassure him that you still wanted to marry him, however long his recovery would take. Lips or no lips. You loved him.

You thought that meant he was going to be fine. The Red Dragon didn’t kill him.

It wasn’t that simple.

His kidney started failing. Dehydration. He needed a massive amount of IV fluids to replace what he had lost and save him, but that volume of fluid had consequences. It made his body swell up to the point that you couldn’t recognize him—to the point that his airway was swollen closed and he couldn’t breathe on his own.

Just a day ago he was talking to you, laughing as you teased him, telling you that you didn’t have to stay with him, and crying when you said you would. You had yelled at him for being such an idiot.

When you walked in the next morning, he was gone.

Overnight, he was like a cadaver, lying unconscious with ventilator and feeding tubes stuffed down his throat. Why did you yell at him?

You were so helpless. There was nothing you could do to make any sort of difference, not even encourage him with tender words or a joke. He couldn’t hear you. He was gone. Every snarky, sassy, smug, self-important, dramatic, gossipy remark was gone—silenced—leaving you with a body and no idea when or if he would wake up. All you could do was watch as he swelled, and hope that the fluids did their job saving his life before they killed him. All you could do was be grateful for every breath, every stubborn heartbeat, and pray they didn’t stop.

A doctor told you his chances of waking up would be slim for a healthy person. With ninety percent of his skin destroyed, bacteria could easily enter his bloodstream, and he could rapidly die of sepsis. The complication of his previous organ damage—especially the kidney Abel Gideon removed—made his probability of recovering next to zero.

“You don’t know what he’s lived through,” you seethed. “He did not survive three different serial killers just to die now. So you are _not_ going to treat him like a lost cause, or…” You tried to think of what _he_ would say, “Or I will sue this hospital for malpractice! That is the renowned psychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Frederick Chilton, and you will not give up on him.”

Blustering didn’t suit you. And haughty threats couldn’t bring his swelling down. The doctors were doing everything they could, but the internal pressure became too much for him to breathe, even with the assistance of a ventilator and oxygen tubes in his nose. They carted him away to the operating room to cut more holes in him.

All you could do was watch.

“It will cause additional scarring,” a very kind nurse with curly hair explained to you as you blinked vacantly in a waiting room, trying not to break down, “but it should allow his chest to expand and save his life.”

You nodded, arms wrapped around your chest. He wouldn’t even notice a few more in the swirling red nebula of scars that his body had become. So long as he survived. You were supposed to get married. You just wanted him to wake up.

* * *

Frederick Chilton awoke in a bare and lonely hospital room.

A nurse came in to check on him after a few minutes of blinking groggily and trying to get his bearings through the static fuzz clouding his mind. She explained what had happened, reviewed the medications he was on, showed him the button to press to call for help, and handed him a remote control. No visitors to announce. No one waiting in the lobby all night, haggard with worry, for him to regain consciousness. No flowers crowding the bedside table.

The small television attached to the far wall, which he could barely see or hear, was less than useless, and the morphine drip prevented him from being able to focus enough to read a book. So he lay in bed, alone, in silence save for the tedious beep of the heart monitor.

It was so dull, he was grateful for having been unconscious for the last thirty hours, which was how long it took for the surgeons to get all the organs back inside of him that Abel Gideon took out, determining which ones were viable to go back, and which would go septic and kill him. Like a jigsaw puzzle. Humpty Dumpty, and not all of the pieces could be put together again.

Days passed, and his only visitor was a police officer there on a formality to take his statement.

He would have thought being disemboweled would make a man more popular. Of course it didn’t. This spared him his pride, at the least—he couldn’t tolerate visitors seeing him pale and clammy-skinned, whimpering with pain in a miserable little hospital gown—and for that he was grateful of his churlish nature, which pushed everyone well past arm’s length.

And yet, he wished they would at least _try_. He wanted people clamoring at his recovery room door so that he could send them away.

He would never be subjected to the indignity of being seen so weak—and yet, what he wouldn’t give to walk in to his office on his first day back and have all of his employees treat him softly, like he was some fragile thing, and not the tyrant they despised. To have them ask if he was all right.

Why didn’t he have more visitors? More flowers? More cards?

He was not well-liked, but he was _distinguished_. That warranted _somebody_ stopping by with condolences. It was just that there was so little in his bare hospital room to distract him from the pain.

As the anesthetic wore off, a throbbing soreness radiated out from his abdomen, growing sharper with time. It was agonizing. With every breath, the contracting of his diaphragm and the expanding of his lungs and ribs tormented the stitches in his skin and the abused organs inside. He was either pumped full of so much morphine he couldn’t stay awake, or was clear-headed and wishing they would pump him full of more drugs so he could not be.

His mother sent a card, and so did the staff of the Baltimore State Hospital For The Criminally Insane. Both had flowers on the front, watercolor roses, and flowing script font in gold, and both meant equally little.

Perfunctory.

The one from the hospital had been insisted upon by the administrator, who had forced the staff to sign it. Each message was generic and impersonal, like they’d been taken from a standardized get-well form letter—although a few were kind enough to make him close his eyes and pretend they were genuinely meant for him. _“We miss you, and wish you a speedy recovery!”_ His heart turned to think one of his employees really missed him and looked forward to him returning. He found the name signed under the message. He had no idea who it was, but he was certain he had never spoken to them.

The one from his mother had most likely been picked out by a maid, presented to her to mark her signature, and then mailed by said maid. It served mainly as a reminder that she hadn’t bothered to visit in person.

Both stung more to receive than if he had no cards at all—written proof that the only way anyone cared for him was as a formality.

There was a third card, however. The only one sent by someone who wasn’t socially obligated to.

_You._

Unlike the others, it was completely unexpected. Jack Crawford, Alana Bloom, or Hannibal Lecter he would have understood, but you were last person he expected to hear from.

It wasn’t even a real card, but printed at home on plain, flimsy printer paper with a cartoon dog wearing a cone-collar that said “Sorry you’re feeling ruff” on the cover. The inside had a short, hand-written message: _Glad you didn’t die._

Childish. Cheap. He should have been insulted. The whole thing was obviously intended to convey how _little_ you cared. But he kept the damned thing long after he’d thrown the other two in the trash. He wished you would come visit so he could tell you how tacky you were to your face. Perhaps it was best that you didn’t—he would have wanted to buy himself flowers to fill the room with first, so it wouldn’t seem as if your tasteless little gesture was anything of significance to him.

He was Dr. Frederick Chilton. It was important for you to know that he didn’t _need_ you at all.

* * *

Frederick’s eyes moved behind closed lids. The swollen purple lids began to twitch, then slowly creep open. The room was hazy and bright with colors streaking at odd geometric angles away from the lights that produced them.

All he could make out were flowers. Dozens of them, hundreds, surrounding him in a resplendent cloud cloud of white and lavender. Either he fell asleep outside in the garden, or he had died and somehow gotten into heaven.

“No, you’re alive, Frederick,” you said from somewhere close. He must have been whispering to himself out loud. Your voice was wavering with powerful sobs that you shoved down to force it to sound soft and patient, but he could hear the laughter in it, too. “You’ve been out for awhile, but you’re doing really well. You just had a successful surgery. They finished debriding your burns and installing temporary grafts so you don’t go septic. Oh, and they were able to get a skin sample! It’s already in the lab so they can start growing you some of your own new skin.”

“Where…?” he blinked a few times, and tried to move before realizing he couldn’t. His body was heavier than lead and a dull ache like paper being torn pulsed beneath his skin at odd intervals. He went to lick his lips, but they weren’t there. His tongue hit empty air above his teeth, and then nothing until it encountered a gauze bandage and a plastic tube going into his nose.

That brought everything crashing back, and he groaned at reality, missing the previous few moments of anesthetic fog when the Red Dragon was just a dream.

You sat beside his hospital bed, on the side of his good eye, watching over him with a hopeful smile, rambling on about how happy you were that he was awake. There was a blue hospital blanket folded over the arm of the chair, and your hair was a mess—he wondered how long you’d been there. Every inch of surface space that wasn’t needed for medical purposes was covered in roses.

“You bought out Holland’s entire stock of flower exports.”

The way the words scraped sluggishly and humorlessly from his hoarse throat, his eyelids drooping lifelessly, made it sound like a reproach—but you laughed. You always laughed at his jokes. 

“They’re all fake,” you admitted. “Hospital rules—you’re an infection risk.”

He wanted to flash you a charming smile, but he couldn’t. He did not know if his face would ever be able to produce a smile again, or how many agonizing surgeries it would take before it could. You wanted to squeeze his hand and kiss him softly, over and over, but you couldn’t. It would be weeks before you could casually touch his skin without the risk of it sloughing off in your hand. At least now that he was wrapped head to toe in thick gauze, you could reach out and gently rest your hand on top of his. It stung bitterly, but he didn’t show it—he didn’t want you to take your hand away. The pressure was comforting, and your engagement ring sparkled on your finger. 

“I am… glad to see you. These places can be so dull.” He met your gaze, hoping his one functional eye could shoulder the entire burden of body language in conveying his gratitude. He felt so defeated. Hollowed out. He stared up at the plain white ceiling. His words were often callous; it was physical passion which had brought you together in the first place, and without it, he feared he may begin to push you away like everyone else.

“Frederick,” you smiled, but your eyes looked like they might cry. “I’m glad to see you, too. Really glad. I don’t know who was there looking out for you the last few times you were in the hospital, but I wanted to make sure you know how loved you are this time. I’m going to be here every single day with books, and podcasts, fake flowers, and anything you want that I’m allowed to sneak in, until we can go home together.”

He didn’t want to say something trite like, “I couldn’t do this without you.”

He could.

He had before. But he didn’t want to. He never wanted to again. You had wormed so deeply into his heart and given his world color and meaning he had never known, even in his darkest moments. You made the biggest things seem unimportant, and the smallest things monumentally significant. He could never tell you how important you were to him, what it meant to not be alone.

The heart monitor betrayed the warm fluttering in his chest as the slow, steady beeping rapidly increased. You glanced up at the machine with concern, then back down to him, a sly grin spreading across your cheeks. Prideful embarrassment was written clearly all over his face, even with only part of his face left.

You wished more than ever that you could kiss him.


	2. Not lost, taken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chilton is is a dark place.

Ten days. Four surgeries. Twenty grafts. Eleven blood transfusions. Third degree burns to ninety percent of his body. The hospital had never seen anything like it—though Chilton was personally doubling the number of times they’d said that.

He was in and out of the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, the hydrotherapy tub, and in and out of consciousness. His only constant was pain.

Unlike pain, you couldn’t stay with him every hour of the day. You came in early every morning to check on him, though he was usually sleeping, and then after work, sitting with him until he fell asleep again. Sometimes you would only get a few minutes of him awake, he was so exhausted from the surgeries, heavy pain meds, and healing.

You were barely sleeping, and he was barely not sleeping.

When he woke up in the middle of the night screaming, heart monitor throwing a fit, limbs jerking hard enough to tear his grafts, it was to a dark, empty room filled with pale ghosts of plastic flowers. You weren’t there to hold him. Not that you could have held him, anyway.

Oh, how he missed you when you were not there to fill the tedious waking hours. His few other visitors were people he hated.

Dr. Bloom had stopped by once, to see whether she felt any remorse for the part she played in his present agony. In those early days, the horror of his appearance had seemed like a tasteless joke to goad her with.

“Your face did not change at all when you first looked at me,” he rasped. “Shock in seeing me is usually… delayed.”

 _Look at me!_ he wanted to shout. Look at what Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter have done. Look what you did, Alana. Look at my face and be shocked, you fucking bastards.

He was shaking by the time she left.

But ten days, and his face was still a thing of nightmares. It made the joke less funny. This was not temporary, it began to sink in, and it was getting harder to maintain his pride. He became less and less comfortable being looked at by anyone. His teeth were bared, dozens of tubes snaked out of him, and he was swollen like a bloated corpse floating down the river.

Layers of cadaver skin were grafted all over his body. He felt like a cadaver. He _wished..._

When he was with the Dragon he had been so afraid that he was going to die, terrified for his own cowardly life. If he had known what torture surviving meant: protracted, cruel suffering without end...

His entire body was too hot all of the time, inflamed, red, and bleeding. He wasn’t producing enough red blood cells to replace the ones he was constantly losing. Between that and the bloody surgeries to remove dead skin, he had so many transfusions, most of the blood circulating through his veins was not his own.

And the nonstop surgeries were just to keep him alive another day, another hour—the nurses sighed with relief at the beginning of their shifts when they saw he hadn’t dropped dead.

As his skin healed, there would be _more_ surgeries to prevent scar tissue from cutting off circulation to his extremities (he had already lost the tip of his remaining ear) and to allow his joints to move. Then, finally, the cosmetic surgery so he could one day walk about in public without hiding his face. Endless. Protracted. Cruel.

He wished he had died.

Being shot was a pleasure cruise by comparison. Even when his cheek was still tender and his head felt like it was about to split open, you could wrap your arms around his chest and stroke his back in calming circles. You would run your fingers through his hair and massage the tension in his scalp away. He missed his hair. And his scalp. He missed your touch the most.

Even your presence, when you were there, did not cheer him as much as he hoped. He longed for the day he could touch you again, but it was too far on the horizon to be worth much. It wasn’t enough. There was so much pain. He would never not be in pain for the rest of his wretched life. He wanted to die.

He hated everything he lost—everything that had been _taken_ from him. It made him furious enough to keep the blood pumping through his veins when any well-adjusted mortal’s body would have slipped into a coma and let itself pass in peace.

Anger. Anger was the only thing keeping him alive.

* * *

Your voice was steady, soft, and persistent. Its musical cadence filled the darkness and surrounded him, embracing his dormant senses and sparking them to life with a warm electric hum that cut through the sleepy fog that had been nesting heavily there. He awoke.

_“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”_

He loved the soothing sound of your voice reading to him, but it make him feel like a child. Usually your presence comforted him, made everything better, but now it pulled him into the waking world where everything hurt. How can one find comfort when every inch of one’s skin is screaming? All his mind could focus on was the stab of annoyance at your patronizing tone.

“What is that drivel?” he scolded, crabby mood apparent.

You stopped reading, letting out a small gasp of surprise to find him conscious. You hesitated, moving your eyes avoidantly over the heart monitor, before cautiously answering, “...Frankenstein.”

It had seemed sort of clever when you started, but with his mood worsening all week, perhaps a story about a man who was made so hideous that all of society rejected and feared him was not a good idea.

 _“Funny.”_ he said. You winced.

You closed the book and set it in your lap. “How are you feeling?”

His chest rose and he let out a tired bark of laughter. “Wonderful.”

“Fred—”

“My skin is on fire,” he snapped. “My skin has been on fire since I was _tortured_ and _burned._ Do not waste my time with brainless questions.”

“Sorry,” you murmured, even though it should have been him apologizing. A pang of guilt churned in his intestines. He wanted to take your hand, to pull you down onto the bed, crush your head to his chest, and weep into your hair so you would understand how he felt. But he could not do any of those things. His hands were swaddled in thick gauze mittens, and he had neither the strength nor flexibility to reach out to you—future surgeries would have to add flexibility to the stiff, contracted scar tissue around his joints. And you laying on his chest would not take his pain away like it did in his fantasy. It would be excruciating.

He could just say the words: _Sorry for being an asshole. I am in pain, and I am scared, but you do not deserve to be treated poorly._ But he didn’t want to, and he was stubborn. Weak.

Guilty silence filled the air between you. His words stung, and under normal circumstances when Frederick was being a dick, you would tell him where to shove it. But he wasn’t snapping at you over a tie he blamed you for losing. He was going through something unimaginable, and it wasn’t your place to get upset. So you threw the hurt into a little bag, and you closed the bag inside a box at the back of your mind. You were the one who spoke first, doing your best to sound cheerful.

“I thought you might be pleased to hear that Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter stabbed Francis Dolarhyde—the man who called himself the Red Dragon—to death. He’s gone.”

His heart monitor anxiously beeped with humiliating candor, but he spoke with cold calmness. “Shall I throw a parade in their honor?”

“I just thought you’d want to know, you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Mr. Graham and Hannibal?” he asked pointedly.

You rubbed your arm, turning your head away. Maybe you shouldn’t have brought it up... but he was bound to hear about it anyway. “The FBI isn’t sure. They never found their bodies.”

“Hannibal Lecter is free?” he wheezed and nearly choked.

Reaching out toward the hospital bed, you placed a hand on Chilton’s bandaged arm that was meant to be calming, but it made him jump in his skin. Deep breaths hissed between his teeth as he tried to get his heart rate under control. When he relaxed a little, you assured him, “If he’s alive, he won’t be coming back here. He was with Will. They’ll be running away together.”

He made a show of grumbling with contemplative hostility. “Killing me would only relieve my suffering; they will be pleased to leave me as I am. We have nothing to fear from them.” He was afraid anyway, but he did not need to admit that. Pathetic. Weak. “But the _Tooth Fairy_ is dead?” he added bitterly, emphasizing the killer’s hated sobriquet.

“The medical examiner said it was slow and painful.”

That drew a satisfied little noise from beneath the bandages. The torn edges of his mouth were smirking.


	3. Shibari

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Chilton explores a new kink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For @thatesqcrush’s kink bingo! Shibari

Frederick is looking quite well since coming home from the hospital. He had lost his lips and most of his skin in his attack by the serial killer known as the Red Dragon, but the hospital has done incredible reconstructive work.

They found a perfect donor match to do a face transplant—skin tone, hair color, and antibodies of course are all close to the original. It was nothing short of a miracle to have found a match so soon—you are so thankful somebody out there cared more about helping change another person’s life than their own open-casket funeral.

His lips are a little different now, almost imperceptibly smaller, with a slightly different curve, but they have full feeling and movement. The muscles of his cheeks tug them into a familiar smile. The new skin covers up his burn scars (though there is a fairly obvious seam behind his ears, a macabre reminder that his face is a mask made of someone else’s face), has eyebrows (darker, and not as full and bushy as his used to be), a full head of hair (the same color, but without the peppering of grey at his temples), and can grow facial hair (his signature coating of stubble is back).

He looks (almost) entirely like himself again. Like the man you first fell in love with so long ago.

The scars covering his neck make him look like a dangerous Mafia boss paired with his sharp suits. He buttons one up, charcoal black with faint pinstripes and an orange tie, studying himself in the bedroom mirror. After approving his appearance, he flicks his green eyes to you, narrowed with devilish intent.

You’re sitting on the edge of the bed, already naked and waiting. You try to flash him a seductive look, but the million butterflies beating their asshole wings against the walls of your stomach sabotage any attempt at acting cool. You are so anxious and excited to try this for the first time.

He coils a dark jute rope through his hands.

So many aching, fragile hours he had spent trapped in a hospital bed, at the mercy of nurses feeding and cleaning him, and doctors cutting into him. It was humiliating. He returned with an exaggerated need to be in control. Tying you up helped satisfy that need.

The moment he brought the idea up you confessed it had always been one of your fantasies, but you’d never trusted a partner enough to try it.

Shibari always seemed the most elegant form of bondage to Dr. Chilton, with its intricately woven forms. He began studying the different patterns even before being released from the recovery ward, first on his tablet, and later, with the help of a nosy, overly-observant, and ultimately disarmingly educational nurse with a side-hustle in the fetish scene. It was better that he was confident in what he was doing by the time he got to try it on you.

Your skin tickles as the rope slides over it, soft and thick, with just a little bite. His brows are low and squared with concentration as he circles you. A smoldering look, combined with his sharp outfit. As much as you love the spontaneous intimacy of cuddly morning sex, the pageantry and theater is maddeningly hot. You want to grab his lapels and pull his handsome scruffy face into a kiss, but he’s in charge tonight. So you let him work, holding the safe word in your mind.

At first you can move easily. The harness of rope crosses your chest, the ropes creaking as he ties each knot with skilled hands. Perhaps they were not cut out to be surgeon's hands, but his long fingers are dexterous and precise. Heat rushes between your thighs just watching them move gracefully as they restrict more and more of your freedom, a gold wedding ring glinting on his left hand.

When he loops the ropes through your groin you really begin to feel it—the tantalizing constriction. Just standing still, the ropes press your sensitive areas, and as he ties it off to the front of your chest, every time you move it puts more pressure there. His knowledge of anatomy means he knows exactly where to place the ropes, what positions to tug you into. You’re helpless to resist now, even if you wanted to.

The rope pulls tight around your hips. He weaves each knot carefully, enjoying the sight of the indents the taut rope makes in your flesh, and the way your body struggles against the friction, testing the rope’s limits and finding the sweet edge of pain and surrender.

He licks his lips, brow still knit in concentration. It's not just about dominance, but about being slow and methodical. Some days he’s so desperate to fuck you, quick and sweaty and passionate, but more often now he enjoys a long, intimate build up. He needs reassurance of your connection. Time to prepare himself.

You look so stunning with your soft skin bound up tight, and he loves how much you trust him—loves watching your face tense with a flash of pain, loosening one rope, tightening another, and seeing the balance of pain and pleasure reach an equilibrium. The way you smile.

“You will tell me if anything begins to feel numb,” he instructs.

“Okay.”

“You will tell me _immediately._ ”

“Yes, Doctor,” you answer with enough conviction to convince him you mean it.

He raises his eyebrows with a skeptical _hmm._ “You had better. We do not want you losing any limbs.”

“Limbs?!”

“The safe word is beets.” He hums to himself pleasantly and binds your arms.

You grasp your forearms as he folds them behind your back, binding them together at the wrist. More loops of the jute pull your upper arms in toward each other so you cannot twist out of position, which has two main effects: it forces your shoulders back and chest out in exaggeratedly good (overly sexual) posture, and turns your arms into a horizontal bar for him to grab onto.

Grabbing the arm harness to control you, he bends you over the bed, making you whine for him to fill you. The rope digs in painfully if you struggle, and you find it strangely intoxicating to give in, sending flames of pleasure straight between your legs. You’re throbbing and ready for him. His open palm strikes your buttocks and you squeal in surprise, his touch amplified by the constriction of flesh.

He leaves you bent over, your entrance presented to him in a humiliating posture with your face pressed into the blankets. There’s a rustling of fabric and the sound of a zipper pulling down. You can’t turn enough to see his gorgeous cock freed behind you, but you know he’s working his pants off as he periodically reminds you of his presence with a stinging slap to the ass.

Plucking at each rope, he teases a different part of your body, adjusting your position until you’re _just right_ , and whimpering pathetically as you beg him to give you his cock. You wish you could see the smug, satisfied grin on his face.

He spreads lube over you, and you startle at the unexpected cold. You grumble at him for not warming it up in his hand first, only to be answered with another spank. Finally he moves the rope aside and fucks into you, working you open gently, but expediently, a steady pressure building rapidly until his hips are flush to your ass. He grabs onto the harness for leverage, and with a strained grunt, begins to move. You moan helplessly. You feel sinfully like a rag doll as he pulls you onto the sweet warmth of his cock to meet each of his thrusts, with no say in it whatsoever. You groan, drooling a little on the sheets as your jaw goes slack.

“Do I still… feel good?” his tenuous voice comes from behind you sounding painfully small. A lot of his cock had to be reconstructed. Considering the extent of his burns it was lucky that he didn’t end up losing it, and that only part of the shaft was covered in a mesh-work of grafted skin and scars that retained most of its original sensitivity. But still, he has been nervous. It’s part of why he wants you bound.

“Oh, Frederick. You feel incredible,” you moan.

His hips stutter as he catches his trembling breath, somehow always knocked off balance by your praise no matter how many times you give it.

“You’re ribbed for her pleasure!”

His hips jerk into you like screeching tires at a busy intersection and he coughs out an embarrassed choking noise before giving you a particularly ruthless spank and resuming.

Your pleasure builds as he pumps in and out of you, gripping the ropes for leverage. He notices it in the way your hips begin to writhe, your breath coming shallow and fast. You want more. He pulls out and flips you onto your back before you can whine at the loss of contact and fucks you hard with his fingers—the hand your wedding ring is on, you notice dizzily—while stroking your heat. As he curls his lengthy fingers against your sweet spot, your back arches and hips try to buck as the ropes dig in harder with each movement. He twists them around your sex and you can’t believe the sensation of blood rushing and pulsing there. Unable to resist, he dips his head between your legs and tastes you. It was just meant to be a taste, but you’re too good, and the way you cry out when he licks you is so enticing he takes you into his mouth and sucks on your throbbing pleasure, swirling his tongue around it sinfully. The combined sensation is more than you can bear—a fire explodes through you as you respond to his tongue, screaming his name as you spasm around his fingers, coming in the hot wetness of his mouth. You feel weak and spent, your whole body shaking, legs trembling as they hang limply over the edge of the bed. The ropes are the only thing holding you together, keeping you from melting right over the blankets.

“Good, you were so good,” he says thickly, licking his fingers clean. “Now it’s daddy’s turn.” A wolfish intensity takes him over, and it sends a shiver of excitement through you.

He drags you to the edge of the bed until your head hangs back off it, and lines up his cock with your mouth. His eyes search yours for any hesitation. And unspoken misgivings. You open your mouth and extend out your tongue, trying to reach his cock. He smirks down at you.

“So eager,” he purrs, tilting his hips forward to let his pink cockhead connect with your warm tongue. You taste yourself on him, and his salty, sweet pre-cum. He lets out a shuddering breath, eyes closing as you desperately lap at his tip. He swallows, and opens his eyes again, trying to appear composed. “Are your arms still doing all right? Nothing falling asleep?”

You whine for his cock, but he pulls it back, raising his eyebrows interrogatively. Actually, there is a little pinch in your right shoulder from laying on it so long, but it isn’t so bad that you want him to stop and fuss over it. This position is so hot. You want him to dominate you.

“I’m OK,” you smile dreamily.

“Good.” He tilts his hips forward again, letting your tongue glide over him, slipping past your lips. He moans as you swallow him, opening your throat to take all of him into your warm depths.

He starts slowly, rocking his hips back and forth by fractions of an inch, pulsing into your mouth carefully. With your hands tied and mouth stuffed with him, there won’t be much you can do to signal him if it’s too much, he worries. But you look so pretty with your lips wrapped around his cock, your throat vibrating as you moan for him, he begins to get into it, thrusting into your mouth until you gag. “Don’t stop,” you beg when he pulls back, “I’ll… um… I’ll hum S.O.S. if I want you to stop. Three short, three long...”

“And three short. Clever.”

Blood rushes to your head making you dizzy and warm. You feel like you’re floating as he fucks your mouth hard, saliva dripping down your upside-down cheek, choking on his fullness, eyes watering. With every deep thrust his balls collide with your lips and nose. The velvety yet rough texture of his grafted cock is so intoxicating as your tongue tries to find every new bump and ridge from surgery. Salty pre-cum floods the inside of your mouth, and you know he’s close by his ragged breathing and low-moaned swears. He thrusts into you, then pulls out to the edge of your lips, just the crown of his cock still inside, then plunges himself back in up to the hilt. He pulls out again, this time all the way, leaving you gasping for breath. He takes a half step forward so you’re between his legs, and you lick and suck on his balls while he jerks himself off, stroking his long, tortured cock until he gasps suddenly, lurching over as he cums all over your chest.

He falls forward, panting, an arm on either side of your waist. He smiles. After a moment of catching his breath, he hops onto the bed to sit and admire his work: the dark ropes laced around you, your lips slick and bruised, still parted and curved into a sleepy, faraway smile. He dips a finger into the cum on your skin and traces it up your stomach. The ticklish sticky sensation snaps you from your trance.

“Marking your territory, _daddy?_ ” you tease (more over his use of daddy than for cumming on you—you already knew he had a bit of a fetish for that when he was feeling possessive).

“What?” he says, tearing off his tie and throwing his jacket aside. It’s sexy to be fucked by a man in a suit, but he has to give in to the fact that it is also far too hot, especially with his inability to sweat from most of his scarred body. “Is that not what one says these days to be… kinky?”

You snort. “All right, daddy, get me out of this, my shoulder is getting numb.”

He looks aghast and immediately props you up against him and starts undoing knots. You hiss as pins and needles shoot up your right arm.

“Has it fallen completely asleep?” he asks, pinching each of the ashy fingers on your right hand to check the circulation. You hem and haw coming up with an answer, earning a scowl. “I told you to tell me _immediately._ ”

“It wasn’t that bad, and we were having fun!”

He groans. “Did I not warn you that you could lose a limb?”

“That was… a joke,” you laugh nervously.

He pushes you forward so you flop face-first onto the mattress. “Perhaps a _slight_ use of hyperbole,” he says, “but not something to ignore.” He grabs something off the bedside table and with a few snips your arms are free. You sit up and stretch them above your head.

His sea-glass eyes are fixed on you, concern etched into his brow. “Better?”

“Much,” you lie. Your arm still feels numb.

“Good.” His mouth tightens, and he suddenly can’t maintain eye contact. “What did… you think?”

“It was a lot of fun,” you grin, not lying.

His eyes brighten. If he had a tail, it would be wagging. He wraps you in his arms and kisses you passionately, smiling against your lips.

“Would you consider trying suspension?” he asks, eager but unsure how much you actually enjoy this.

Your eyes go wide as saucers and you start to bounce. “Ooh, can we?”

“Of course!” he beams, “I will invest in the finest, and safest set up. You have to tell me about these things sooner if you want to continue with it,” he adds seriously, rubbing up and down your arm which is still flooded with pins and needles. “I do not want to hurt you. I love you.”

_I love you, too._

You want to say it back, but your mouth won’t open. So you just hold onto him, trying to grip him in your arms and feel the solidness of his chest, but your arms squeeze together into nothing. He’s gone.

_I love you so much, Frederick._

Your eyes opened into a dark room. The outlines of a dresser, closet, and bathroom door were familiar in the faint glow of moonlight. The bed beside you was cold. You rolled over and nursed the arm you’d been sleeping on as hot tears began to roll down your face, got into your mouth, and made your nose run, silent sobs shaking your body.


	4. Traumatized Cranky Bastard

Twelve days. Six surgeries. Fifteen blood transfusions.

“Did you bring me something to eat?” he whined. Considering he could barely lift his voice above a whisper, it was an impressive feat that he could whine. “Tell me you smuggled something _edible_ that does not go into a tube through my nose.”

“I’m sorry, honey-bear,” you pouted. “But you know I can’t until the doctors OK it.”

“I _am_ a doctor.”

You rolled your eyes. “You’re still at a high risk of going septic—no outside foods covered with outside bacteria. Besides, they won’t let you eat anything solid yet.”

“Sanguinaccio dolce. Mango smoothie. Crème brûlée. Yamakake Soba...” he listed off non-solid things you ought to have snuck in for his enjoyment.

“And how would I get them in there?” You rapped your knuckles on the clear acrylic of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber.

He scowled. “This is not a zoo. No tapping the glass.”

You grinned and pulled a chair alongside the chamber so you were sitting next to him.

“Did you bring the laptop?”

Slinging the messenger bag you were carrying off your shoulder, you pulled out a smooth rectangular object and held it up proudly. “That I did. I’m ready to write if you’re up for it,” you said, but added with some hesitation, “Are you sure you want to do this _now?_ You should be resting, and… I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you to relive what happened.”

“I am sure,” he snapped. “I may drop dead at any moment, so we will finish this now. While I still draw breath.”

You stiffened imperceptibly in your chair. The reminder that, despite making it this long, he was far from out of the woods was an unwelcome dagger in your chest, which you quickly plucked out and stuffed away in the box of things you weren’t going to think about.

“As for the wisdom of my reliving it—I feel his teeth every time I close my eyes. I may as well profit from the experience.”

Dr. Chilton was growing anxious that it had been nearly two weeks since his encounter with Francis “The Red Dragon” Dolarhyde, and he had not yet had the chance to publish on the subject. He had wasted far too much time being unconscious and dying—he needed to send a letter in to the _American Journal of Psychiatry_ before some know-nothing crackpot took a swing.

He was the foremost authority on the Dragon—the only person to have communicated with him and lived who was not, himself, a fugitive for murder (or a blind girlfriend, but he doubted Reba was going to publish anything). This was his achievement. His way of staying relevant. The definitive analysis of the Red Dragon for the _Journal_ , and then a spectacular ending for his book once he had his own hands to type with again. No one would take this opportunity from him.

After living with Frederick Chilton for over three years in relative domestic harmony, there were times you forgot what you ever used to dislike about him. Why you hated him so intensely when you first met.

This was not one of those times.

As you took dictation from your glass-encased fiance, you felt a crushing wave of empathy for the man’s poor secretary. He was demanding and fussy, making you read back every sentence to him line by line and mercilessly correcting any mistakes or omissions. He spoke slowly because of his weakened lungs and raw throat, and the thick glass and lack of lips made him difficult to understand, especially with nurses walking through and machinery beeping and whirring in the background—but when you tried explaining that to justify a transcription error, he took it as a personal affront.

You had to support him no matter what, you reminded yourself. This was much harder on him than you. You can always leave if you want you; he can’t. So when he was frustrated and cranky, you were patient and kind.

It took five hours and ten rewrites to get through two thousand words he was satisfied with submitting for publication, and you were nearly crying by the time you left.

* * *

Thirteen days.

High protein intake is critical to a speedy recovery in burn patients, but Frederick’s mangled digestive system could not tolerate protein very well. Keeping his kidney off the precipice of failure was a tightrope walk involving dietitians planning his every calorie intake, and daily blood work monitoring.

As a medical doctor, Frederick Chilton was aware of, and understood, these things. However he still rejected them as excuses when you once again did not bring him any outside food.

“Then what is the point of you coming?” he snapped, and immediately wished he had not. You stood frozen in the doorway of his recovery room unsure what you did wrong. You were right, of course—his throat felt like he had fellated broken glass. As much as he longed to chew something flavorful, with texture, he could not have swallowed solid food anyway. He closed his eyes. Softer, he asked, “Did you bring the March issue of the _Journal of Psychiatry?_ ”

You let out a held breath, unfreezing, and pulled the magazine out of your bag, presenting it with an upbeat flourish. “Delivered to your doorstep.”

“Would you read it to me?” He sighed, humiliated. It was not only that he could not hold the publication—even if you were to flip the pages for him, with only one working eye and no reading glasses, it was hopeless. He was completely dependent on you.

A cough shook his body as if to punctuate how completely he was broken. _Useless. Weak._

The metal feet of the visitor’s chair scraped on the white floor like nails on a chalkboard as you dragged it close to his bedside, making him wince until you settled down and helped him browse for an article of interest.

He could barely make himself care about the content of the study. As you read, you rested one arm on the mattress right next to his, where it lay helplessly prone alongside his body, and he could feel the warm weight of you sinking into the cushion. The pressure was uncomfortable on his inflamed tissue, but soothing to something deeper. God, he wanted to be soothed. He wanted so badly to feel any kind of comfort. Anything to latch onto. He closed his eyes and got lost in your voice. For a moment, he could almost forget about the searing pain in each of his limbs and pretend he was at home, in his bed, with you.

The soothing, steady lull stopped, and he opened his eyes, horrified to find you looking intently at his ruined face. His nostrils flared painfully. “Do not stare,” he warned.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to,” you said. “I finished the article. I thought you fell asleep.” You searched for somewhere else to settle your eyes—the metal bar at the edge of the bed. Your lap. A flower arrangement.

You made such a show of not staring at him that he was even more certain that you had been. He was hideous. Perhaps that entertained you. You were probably already planning for Halloween. Red-hot thoughts swirled around his head like cinders.

Before you could get through a second article, a nurse came in with a tray of mushy hospital food. Humiliation stung deep for you to even see the damned tray, and it annoyed him that you did not immediately excuse yourself. There was no way in Hell he would allow you to watch such a disgusting, embarrassing process—being spoon fed like a toddler, the nurse wiping off his toothy chin of the spillage meant to be kept in check by lips.

“Go home,” he grumbled, leaving no room for argument.

You had barely been there for half an hour.

* * *

Fourteen days.

“Do you want to look at venues?” you offered, tucking him in with the extra blanket you had a nurse bring because he was cold.

“Venues?” he repeated with clear exasperation. He let out a weak cough.

“It’ll be fun! It’ll take your mind off things.” You grabbed your laptop off the plastic visitor chair where you’d left it, and excitedly held it up so he could see the screen from his prone position. There was already a search typed into google with preview images of scenic gardens glowing with string lights and towering ancient library ballrooms.

“I thought it went without saying our wedding date is… postponed.”

Your shoulders deflated. “I know, but… you’ll be out of the hospital by next year,” _barring complications,_ “so we can use the time to plan. We were going to have to postpone anyway if you couldn’t pick anywhere that was good enough for your standards,” you teased.

“It is pointless.” He laughed bitterly, humorlessly, and your brief smile dropped.

“It isn’t… pointless.”

“I will not be able to visit any of the locations.”

“But we could make a list of places you want to visit when—”

“Stop!” he hissed.

“Oh,” you said quietly. “OK.” You sounded small. Too small.

“I… uh...” Frederick tried to say _something._ Something to make you sound less small and wounded. Fragments of thoughts and half-formed apologies stuck in his sore throat. Fuck, his skin hurt. Parts of it were starting to heal, but in the short-term that only made it worse, because now it itched, too. Pain. Itch. Guilt. Cold. You deserved so much more than him. “You should go,” he said at last, finally settling on the only way to make it better.

“Wh-what?”

“Just… go,” he croaked.

“I’m sorry. I won’t bring it up again. What do you want to talk about? Or, I can shut up and we can listen to music, or...”

You were apologizing. Again. Because he was being an asshole. It disgusted him how weak he made you. You used to be so fierce. Stubborn and unstoppable. But being with him was slowly killing your fire.

“Get out of this place. I want to be alone.”

It was better this way, he thought. It was better for you to get away from him.

You stared at him silently across what now felt like a vast distance of white laminate flooring. His beautiful, pale, mismatched eyes were fixed on the ceiling, hard and uncompromising. He blinked rapidly.

You wished you knew what was going on in his head. You wished you could fix it for him. But right now, as much as it pained you, he wanted you to leave, and maybe that was the best you could do.

“OK,” you relented. “I’ll be back tomorrow, all right? I love you.”

The only sound as you packed your laptop away and slipped your coat over your shoulders was his ragged breathing, the beeps and tones of hospital machines, and the occasional cough. He waited until you were almost out the door before replying, “I love you, too.”


	5. Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Frederick teeters on the brink of death.

Fifteen days. Seven surgeries. Seventeen blood transfusions.

You rushed to his hospital room straight after work, not even stopping at home to change or get something to eat. After the call you’d gotten, you were too nauseous to eat, anyway.

Glowing orange heat lamps hung over his bed, like the ones they use for hatchling chicks at the farm when they’re too young to regulate their own temperature. He had all but vanished under a thick pile of blankets.

You remembered how much of a baby he could be in the winter when his feet were cold. How he’d make you shriek by tucking his icy extremities under your warm pajamas, and how you’d squirm and swear at him and laugh until you finally settled back against his chest. His hands were always freezing, but his body was like a steam engine pumping out heat. Under the blankets with him, trapping each other’s glowing warmth between your entwined bodies, the coldest nights were always so cozy.

There was nothing cozy about this.

Frederick’s temperature kept dropping despite the doctors’ efforts to stabilize it, and it had dipped dangerously low. He was barely moving. It tore up your heart to see him so helpless. If his temperature didn’t come up soon, he could die.

You knew that. The rational part of your brain knew that he wasn’t out of danger yet, that this wasn’t a surprise. He told you he needed to write that article right away because he might not have much time left. But you didn’t think it would really happen—that he could fade so fast.

“Hey, Frederick… I’m here,” you said softly, sitting beside him. There was no indication he was aware of you being in the room. The only signs of consciousness were feeble, rasping, wet moans.

He coughed weakly under the pile of white sheets.

They had already increased his antibiotics regimen at the first warning signs, but his cough was developing into a respiratory infection, and getting worse. All the smoke and water he’d inhaled and the tubes forced down his throat were taking their toll on top of everything else collectively beating his immune system into submission. He was so sick.

You wanted to crawl under the covers, wrap yourself around him, and keep him warm. He could slip his icy fingertips under your shirt, and you wouldn’t complain.

All you could do was sit beside him, talking to him about your day, and hope that, if he could hear you, your voice was comforting. That he even wanted your company. You listened to the monitors, reassured by their continued steady beeps, terrified they might suddenly stutter and fall, and tried not to cry.

You hated being so helpless.

* * *

Sixteen days.

For the second time, you walked into the hospital doors in the morning to find he was gone. Over night, his condition went critical. The infection had turned into full-blown pneumonia. He was still alive, thank god, but he was intubated again, and put on a ventilator with paralytic drugs keeping him unconscious.

He was, effectively, in a coma.

Every time you thought he was getting better, he slipped away again. Two days ago he was fine. He was dictating notes and being the cranky asshole you loved. Now a doctor had to thread endoscopic instruments down into his lungs to clear the secretions, because he couldn’t even cough.

A nurse gently patted your shoulder to get your attention. You weren’t sure how long they’d been standing there.

“I’m sorry to have to ask this, but do you know if your fiance has any family, anyone who might like a chance to say goodbye?” Your face drained of color and the nurse quickly worked to reassure you, “He may still recover. Nobody here is giving up, but…”

But his chances weren’t good.

“I don’t know. I… I can try to call his mother, but...” For someone you were about to marry, you didn’t know much about Frederick’s family. All you knew was that he had a sister who died a long time ago, his parents were egregiously wealthy, and they almost never spoke. His mother sent a card, which had earned nothing but hostile silence from Frederick. That was all.

He had always been lonely, your Dr. Chilton. Before you, anyway. He was charming, but an expert at keeping people at arm’s length. Desperate for connection, but always looking for it in the wrong places. You still weren’t sure how you’d manage to slip past his defenses. But his family wasn’t coming.

You were the only one by his bedside, waiting to see if he woke up. Alone in your terror that you might never hear his voice again.

* * *

Twenty-five days. Eight surgeries. Eighteen blood transfusions.

Chilton was out for over a week. Days crept by as you tortured yourself reading statistics like “pneumonia acquired in the hospital can be fatal as often as 33 percent of the time,” and “pneumonia increases mortality rate in burn patients by 25 percent.”

You were a mess at work, sobbing in the bathroom until they told you to go home. But you couldn’t stand being in that giant, empty house without him.

You had dinner with your old boss, Jack Crawford, to take your mind off things. The last time you saw him you screamed your throat raw, but he had always been a friend and mentor, and right now he was the one person who understood what you were going through.

He talked about Bella, and how hard it is to watch a loved one fading away. About the darkness he failed to see in Will Graham—skirting just shy of accepting responsibility for Frederick’s fate. You distinctly did not take back calling him negligent and incompetent. Still, despite everything, you knew Frederick held him in high regard. It was what got him in so much trouble. You encouraged Crawford to visit when Frederick was feeling better. If he got better.

Then dinner was over as quickly as it began, and you were alone again.

Every day that a ventilator kept him breathing, you wondered if that was the day you were going to get the phone call. You couldn’t bear it. You lived in the hospital waiting room, making meals out of vending machine Pop Tarts and the latest scraps of information the nurses could give you.

Surgery was risky on a patient already in critical condition, but the doctors decided to perform a bronchoscopy to drain a lung abscess. After that, his pneumonia began to improve. A few more days, and he was off ventilation, and in the hyperbaric chamber.

The moment you heard he was awake, you sprang up from your chair the waiting area (swayed with dizziness for a moment) and shambled to the oxygen therapy room.

* * *

“You look terrible,” he joked. His voice was quiet and hoarse, but you laughed a little too hard, sniffing and rubbing your eyes as your body shook. It was good to see a week unconscious had restored his cheery mood.

Ducking and weaving your head, you tried to get a good look at your reflection in the curved glass. When you caught a glimpse, the depth of dark circles made you recoil back from yourself.

“I couldn’t go home until I knew you were OK,” you explained. “I guess I could use a shower. And some sleep.”

Frederick observed you sympathetically. He was still bandaged head to toe, and what bits of skin did show were as red and inflamed as ever. He hummed in agreement. “All this beauty rest has done _wonders_ for me.”

You laughed again, and it brought a smile to his cheeks and a sparkle of humor to his one good eye. At least he still entertained you.

“It is flattering that you would destroy yourself on my behalf, but you really ought to go home and take care of yourself.” He rolled his eyes upward cheekily, “I cannot have my adoring public discover I am marrying such a slob.”

Your heart missed a beat at the mention of marriage.

Leaning close until your forehead bumped the clear barrier, you pressed your palm to the glass. He lifted his hand off the bed, reaching toward yours, but could only make it a few trembling inches before he winced, and his arm fell back down, limp. He swore. Then he gave a self-deprecating chuckle to hide the frustrated wetness building in his eyes.

“Really,” he said without malice. “You should go home.”

“I can’t. You just woke up.”

“How long has it been since you slept?”

A few self-conscious mumbles were all you managed in response. He huffed knowingly.

“I promise not to die. You need rest.”

Your head did feel heavy, and it was difficult to keep your eyelids from drooping. “But it’s so empty. The house is so empty without you,” you sobbed.

“I know,” he said quietly, after a pause. He hated to see you like this, hated that you were suffering because of him.

“Just a few more minutes? I want to stay with you for a little while.”

“That would be nice.” His voice welled with such sincerity your heart broke. “Thank you.”

Soon, you thought. Soon you’d be taking him home with you, and your lives could be normal again.


	6. Frederick's Surprisingly Unplanned Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can have a little domestic fluff smut flashback. As a treat.  
> (a continuation of the scene at the end of [this chapter in the prequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25228654/chapters/62009977))

“Marry me?”

You inhaled your water and started choking on it, hacking and beating your chest to clear your lungs. “W-what?” you coughed, eyes widening at him where he stood in the bathroom door. You’d been expecting him to propose the entire time you were in Paris—a grand, dramatic, Frederick Chilton gesture, dripping with tasteless opulence. Not in your bedroom as you were unpacking suitcases and getting ready for bed.

“Marry me,” he repeated with more conviction, puffing out his chest, though his voice then wavered and he quickly said, “If you want to. Please?” He kicked himself for the pathetic addition and wondered if he shouldn’t just crawl on his belly and beg.

“Frederick,” you beamed, leaping over the bed to cross the room to him directly. Cupping his cheeks, you felt the stubble of his jaw scratch under your palms, letting your fingertips plunge into his hair as your thumbs caressed over his ears. You drew him into a kiss. Tender but brief. He was still waiting on an answer, hands twitching impatiently as they took up their usual place around your hips. You cocked your head. “You’re not going to get down on one knee or something?”

His cheeks heated beneath your hands. “I… do not have a—a ring to…” he stammered and swallowed.

“Really? How many rings do you own? You couldn’t spare one?”

“That is not the same! An engagement ring is—” His exasperated explanation halted abruptly as he realized you were tormenting him to amuse yourself. The corners of your eyes crinkled mischievously. He grumbled and lightly swatted your behind. “I saw you sipping a glass of water beside the bed, and I suddenly could not imagine my life without you. Is that foolish?”

“Frederick H. Chilton, was this was a _spontaneous_ proposal?”

His ears turned red and he looked aghast. “You are right. This is not how it is done. Forget I said anything, and I shall arrange for something more romantic, and—”

Your lips crashed hot and passionate against his, your heart nearly bursting. He moaned with surprise into your mouth, stumbling back against the door frame as you pressed more of your weight against him. “Shut up. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,” you panted inches from his face, breathing in his air.

“It is?” He tipped his head to press his lips to your again. You closed your eyes, humming in the affirmative.

“I’ve rubbed off on you,” you teased.

He made a disgusted face. “Vicious lies.” You were low class. A mess. Utterly hopeless when it came to fashion without his help. And warm, kind, and clever. Appealing to others instantly in a way he could never comprehend. “Do you think so?” he asked, and this time meant it with nothing but admiration.

“Yes,” you said softly, kissing along his jaw. He nuzzled into you, curling his hand around the nape of your neck.

“I suppose I have had an influence on you, as well. You dress better, at least.”

You kissed over his ear—he shuddered, fingers tightening, as you sighed into it and nibbled on the lobe—and down his neck. “I mean yes,” you murmured against his salty skin, sucking lightly at his pulse point. “That’s my answer.”

He drew in a long, unsteady breath, and blew it back out in one reverent huff. You were trailing kisses down to his partially-unbuttoned neckline when he caught your chin and ducked down to capture your lips. “I want to please you tonight,” he whispered low and huskily. An electric jolt shivered down your spine and pulsed between your legs.

He unbuttoned the silky shirt he gave you and kissed down your chest, sucking little marks into your skin, tracing a nipple with his pointed tongue. You gasped and coiled your fingers through his hair.

“Bleh!” he pulled back suddenly, smacking his tongue over the roof of his mouth. “Darling,” he said very seriously. “You taste like travel sweat and airplane. I was about to shower… would you care to join me?”

You took his hand and followed him into the bathroom. “Absolutely, _fiancé._ ”

* * *

With a twist of the knobs, both luxuriant shower heads started to fill the room with steam. Having your own water streams so no one was ever left shivering waiting their turn made showering together much more enjoyable—another perk of a rich partner.

Chilton stood in front of the vanity taking out his contact lens and prosthetic teeth. A long, raised scar ran up his abdomen all the way to the base of his sternum. As one side of his mouth sagged under a foggy, unseeing eye, he thought about how much _less_ he had become. He had finally found somebody who wanted to spend their life with him, who loved him, and all he had left to offer in return were the grotesque remains of Frederick Chilton.

“Are you being wistful out there?” your voice chided from behind the shower curtain.

“I am not being wistful!” he insisted.

“You better not.” You joined him in front of the mirror, wrapping your arms around his chest and leaning your head over his shoulder. “Look at that beautiful face,” you said, and kissed his cheek, watching him through the glass. He grumbled softly, but his eyes closed and he nuzzled against your lips.

You loved being able to see yourself kissing him. The sight of the two of you together, naked, sent a wave of—not just arousal, joy—washing over you. “What a handsome couple, huh? Look at us.”

He opened his eyes and looked. He didn’t like himself naked. You, he loved to see in any state of undress. You were always perfect. Even when you weren’t.

You drew your hand up and down through his soft chest hair, enjoying the texture. Like a teddy bear. Then you smoothed down over his abdominal scar, following it to its end, just above his hardening cock. You watched the reflection of your fingers close around it. Got a perfect view of his face going slack as you gently pulled back the foreskin and stroked the excited pink head.

Chilton tried to apply his usual sense of superiority to watching his body being used by you in the mirror, but all of his usual pride was in his clothing. In his flawless hair, and status-elevating cuff links. The polished figure he presented to the world. Not this. These were the ugly raw materials he had to work with. He criticized his stomach, too soft thanks to his sweet tooth, too scarred. His face…

But you loved him naked. It was difficult to keep drowning in his own thoughts with your chest vibrating at his back, your hand sweetly and insistently working him into arousal. You loved what was underneath his clothes most of all, and that puzzled him, hurt him, and pulled him to you with the deepest, warmest gravity.

You stroked his cock until he was rigid and thick, his pulse strong under your hand. Your other hand reached between his thighs, two fingers pressing into the skin behind his balls. He inhaled sharply and writhed beneath you as you massaged him, rubbing your fingers in slow spiraling circles.

“Th-that is… very good,” he gasped in approval. His eyes met yours in the mirror, and he watched your lips curl devilishly into a smirk before you sank your teeth into his shoulder, your hips starting to grind against him lustfully.

His heart was pounding in time with your movements, and he whimpered softly at each touch. You were going to send him over the edge too fast rubbing his ass like that. He pulled open a vanity drawer and grabbed a bottle of lube. “Switch,” he said. “I want to come inside you… not make a mess on the counter.”

The marble sink counter top was cold beneath your hands as he bent you over and rubbed his cock over your entrance. He moved quickly into position, missing the stimulating contact of your hands, but he worked you open slowly until he knew you were ready—until you pushed your hips back against his, sliding him deeper inside you, and begged him to fuck you—then set a firm, steady pace. The sound of smacking flesh filled the tiled bathroom.

“I love you,” he choked out, breath catching in his throat.

“F-Frederick— _oh god,_ ” you cried, looking up the man you were going to spend the rest of your life with claiming you from behind. “I-I love you, too.” His eyes were clouded with lust as his hips snapped rhythmically into you, drawing a moan with each sinfully deep thrust. The pace hitched as he noticed you watching him through the mirror, his mouth tightening, for a moment, into a crooked, self-conscious smirk. Then you grabbed his hand and tugged it between your legs to your aching sex, and your moans as he worked to get you off took up all of his attention.

He bent low over your back, his hot, ragged breath tickling the shell of your ear. His breathing was louder, almost sobbing with each hard exhale as his pleasure grew too much to bear, and his undisguised arousal drove the throb between your legs into a frenzy. In one sudden wave he broke, an oath of love for you trembling in his throat as he filled you with his hot seed.

He wrapped his arms around you, watching your face in the mirror, smiling back at him.

“Fuck,” he groaned, burying his sweaty face in your back. “I said I wanted to please you.”

“I am pleased.”

“You did not even finish, you liar. Is the bar for my performance that low?”

“Frederick...”

“I see,” he continued, lifting his head, “Not ten minutes ago you agreed to marry me, and already you have resigned yourself to a lifetime of disappointing sex. How dull.”

Laughing, you pulled out so you could swivel around and face him. “Make it up to me in the shower,” you kissed him, sucking his lower lip, raking it between your teeth before it snapped wetly back to him. “We can put that feisty tongue of yours to work.”

He shuddered with pleasure. “Yes, dear.”

* * *

The tile walls were already dripping with steam from the shower you had wastefully left running. It reminded you of your vacation to a Virgin Islands resort. _A destination wedding, maybe,_ you thought, stepping into the shower. Frederick was already chatting away about the ring he would buy you. You rolled your eyes and groaned.

“How big is the diamond going to be?”

“Enormous,” he growled, smiling against your lips as he joined you under the hot stream of water. He watched you shake your head in wry amusement, and thoughtfully ran his fingers along your temple and down your jaw, gently taking your chin. “That is not what you want… is it?”

“I was thinking something simple. Matching bands.”

He sighed heavily. “That is what wedding bands are for.”

“In a lot of cultures it’s the same ring, and you just switch what finger it’s on after the wedding.” You held up your hand, fingers splayed, to demonstrate. “Which makes sense—I mean, why buy two rings to mean the same thing?”

He snatched your hand from the air and nipped at your knuckles. “Every day, you surprise me with how unsophisticated you are.” His brow was low and chiding, but his eyes were soft, and the curve of his lips turned upward at the corners. “You never let me spoil you.” He took a nibble of your thumb.

“All I want is you,” you answered, and brushed back the dark hair plastered to his forehead. Then you added with a grin, pumping your eyebrows, “And your mouth.”

His chest rumbled with appreciation as you pushed his shoulders. He held your eyes as he sank to his knees, his hands sliding down your wet sides. Your aching sex throbbed in anticipation.

“Maybe I’ll get _you_ a flashy engagement ring. It’s more your style.”

He hummed in consideration. He liked the sound of that, actually. He liked being treated. “But I get to pick it out. Your taste can be… questionable.”

“We’ll go togeth— _ah!_ ” you yelped, back arching with an electric fire as Frederick’s mouth closed around your heat and began consuming you like a man starved.


	7. Rift

Thirty-two days. Nine surgeries. Twenty blood transfusions.

Sometimes it seemed like just yesterday when everything was going right—you and Frederick were so happy together, his books were selling, your career was flourishing, and he had just asked you to marry him. Sometimes, it felt like a lifetime ago. A state of being so foreign, you wondered if it had even been real, or if you were remembering someone else’s life.

Seasons turned. Cherry blossoms were starting to bloom in the parks around Maryland, and each gust of cool wind carried with it their sweet pink fragrance. The spring air vibrated and sang with life renewed. But where you were headed, the air was stagnant, beige, and sterile.

As the automatic sliding glass doors drew you into the hospital, away from the sun, a piece of your heart withered like a flower. It sank deeper when you considered how the unhappy hours you whiled away in those sterile halls were nothing compared to what Frederick had to endure. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to leave.

Physically, he was beginning to show signs of real improvement. The pneumonia had completely cleared up, and he was starting to receive permanent transplants from the cutting-edge, lab-grown skin created from his own cells. Most of his body was still wrapped up in gauze, but a few places had only received second-degree burns, and those patches were almost back to normal. For the first time since the attack, his odds of _not_ dying were higher than his odds of dying.

Mentally was a different story. His moods grew progressively more sour. With none of his true nemeses at hand to take out his bitterness on, that burden fell upon his nurses, doctors, and upon you—and it was beginning to weigh heavily. At first you didn’t want to see the rift that was forming, even as he cut your visiting hours short in an angry huff, and had fewer and fewer kind words for you. You shoved every fear and frustration into a box at the back of your mind so you could keep smiling. He was just in pain, you kept telling yourself. He just needed time.

You held onto the hope that as he got better, your relationship would return to what it had been before. But he was getting better, and the rift grew wider.

“We’ll still want to wait at least six months to do the procedure, until your infection risk has dropped to baseline levels for a healthy adult, but we’re putting you on the transplant waiting list now,” the doctor explained. She was one of his regular surgeons who had been with him since day one. She wore a white lab coat over blue scrubs, and hid behind a clipboard as she spoke. You liked the that she needed to use the file as a shield—it made her relatable. Always friendly, and clearly a skilled surgeon, but uncomfortable with the heavy emotional talking to patients, especially to Dr. Frederick Chilton, who was always in a bad mood, and always ready with a scathing remark.

But today he had nothing to say. No critique on the hospital’s competence. No casual observations with hidden barbs. Just a silent nod of acknowledgment before turning his head to gaze out the window at the fresh spring flowers, framed by the sea of fake ones you had bought.

Francis Dolarhyde, the Red Dragon, had bitten Frederick’s mouth with such extreme ferocity there was not enough connective muscle left to reconstruct new lips from Frederick’s own tissue. The only option for him to look normal again would be a face transplant—donated facial muscle, skin, and hair from a cadaver—although the doctor explained that the procedure was risky. After taking the transplant, Frederick would be put on immunosurpressant drugs for the rest of his life to prevent rejection, which meant every flu season, or even a coworker with a cold, could turn deadly without careful precaution. But to Frederick, it was worth the risk. He couldn’t bear spending his life being stared at. He couldn’t even stand _you_ looking at the black hole that was his face.

Yet what the doctor explained about the procedure added weight after weight to Frederick’s chest until he felt crushed by despair.

The donated tissue had to be a very close match, or his antibodies would reject the new lips. Unlike receiving a heart or a kidney, his new skin had to be an aesthetic match as well. It could not be from too old a donor, or the skin would lack the proper elasticity. And, unfortunately, most organ donors were not comfortable donating external organs—it ruins the open-casket wake.

So, he could be waiting on a match for a very long time.

You thanked the clipboard-wielding doctor when Frederick remained sulking, not bothering to look up as she left. He adjusted himself slightly to follow a flash of movement—a bird—out the window, and winced as it tugged his unyielding scar tissue. Something tore under his armpit, but he didn’t yelp in pain—he was used to this level of it by now—but his eyes watered.

“At least you can sit up a little bit now. That’s great, isn’t it?” you said in an attempt to cheer him up.

He scoffed, and made no immediate reply. He could “sit” if a nurse helped prop him up. And it hurt.

 _Years,_ was all he kept thinking. _It could take up to three years to find a match, possibly longer,_ the doctor said.

“Up to three years or longer,” he growled sarcastically. “She does realize that means nothing? It means any time, or never.”

“I know...”

“But thank god at least I can sit,” he spat bitterly. “A _little._ ”

You were taken aback by his sharp rebuke and fell silent, a cavernous gulf between you though you sat right beside his bed. As you recovered from the sting, however, his words made you smile. He had always been churlish, but recently all of the spirit had been eroded away from his petty attitudes, leaving him defeated and mean. It was nice to hear his churlishness take on a spark of sarcastic sass.

“Don’t lose hope, darling,” you said in an overly-sweet patronizing cadence. “One day you’ll have enough movement back to flip her off.”

He paused, eyes flicking over to you curiously. You had been downtrodden for weeks, too, and he hadn’t expected a joke. He chuckled appreciatively. You wished the good moments lasted longer these days.

It wasn’t as though his life had ended, even if his full cosmetic recovery would take a little longer than he hoped, and even if he was bedridden for several more months. It was that sharp mind and wit that made you fall in love with him, and he still had that. He could keep you entertained for hours discussing some arcane piece of trivia or sharing lurid gossip. Since he was cut off from his normal sources of scuttlebutt, you kept him updated on all the latest rumors you’d learned over dinner with Jack Crawford—about the shitstorm he’d brought down on himself at the FBI when Will Graham went rogue, how Alana and her wife fled the country (but you heard they might be in Cuba), Freddie Lounds being sued again. He always enjoyed hearing about other people’s misfortunes, but today it just made him jealous that you’d been spending time with Jack.

“You have both recently lost a spouse. What _comfort_ you must take in each other,” he insinuated.

“I haven’t lost you, Frederick.”

You went into that sentence thinking you were convincing him that you loved him, but as it closed, you realized you were desperate to convince yourself he wasn’t gone. The more you tried to hold him close, the more you felt him pulling away, and felt a creeping dread that even if he got better, you would lose him. Everything you tried to say to reassure him only made him feel worse, and you wondered if it was your fault. Someone more capable, more empathetic, would know the right things to say. You were a failure. He deserved more.

His professional life, too, hadn’t ended. His injury would barely be a bump in the road to his writing career if he wasn’t so stubborn and prideful. The publisher offered to send a ghostwriter to finish _The Dragon Slayer,_ for which they greedily anticipated a significant boost in sales, considering the author’s headline-making personal involvement in the Red Dragon’s end. Frederick, however, refused to be interviewed by some insipid amateur. He claimed they would not understand the nuances of psychology required, and stood firm on the grounds of artistic integrity, but the truth was, he did not want anybody else to see him.

His face had not made it into the papers, despite several attempts by Freddie Lounds to sneak into the hospital with a hidden camera, and he did not want any more of the world than absolutely necessary to know the extent of what the Dragon had done to him. He did not want to see the shock in the writer’s eyes at seeing his disgusting lipless teeth. He did not want a stranger to see him inevitably start drooling the longer he spoke—and he hated repeating himself to people who could not understand his impaired diction.

No. Publishing _The Dragon Slayer_ would have to wait, though the possibility of another author beating him to the punch bothered him nearly as much as his missing lips. After an entire month recuperating, he thought he would at least be able to type again, but he could barely move his gauze-mittened fingers.

The world had not forgotten him, evidenced by the occasional fan-mail the publisher forwarded to him. You would bring them in and read them—a lot of get-well-soons, and entreaties to hear his side of the Francis Dolarhyde story. A lot of them were from professionals and students in the psychiatric field, pointing out errors or suggesting contradictory theories. Those were the most fun to read, because Frederick would come alive with indignation, debating with the letter as if its sender could hear him, sometimes making you send a response, seething with superiority as he dictated.

In those brief moments, it was like having the old Frederick back. Then a nurse would come in and need to run a test, or feed him, or something else that embarrassed him back into his shell of anger. Or he would grow too animated and rip one of his grafts, and his zeal for argument would end precipitously with a scream, and a surgeon.

As you shuffled a handful of addressed envelopes and started reading through the latest batch of strangers wishing him a healthy recovery, you were struck by a thought.

“Why haven’t I met your family?”

The wind caught in his throat. His scabbed-over nostrils flared before he answered, “I doubt that is what the letter reads.”

“They never visit, even when… even when you could have _died._ My parents even flew in that first week, when they heard. They helped me with the flowers. Why do your fans send more condolences than your family?”

Gritting ones teeth does not come easily when ones teeth are constantly bared by default, but Frederick grit his teeth. “My mother is old. She can hardly be expected to travel.”

A plausible answer, but not the full story. His discomfort with the subject only spurred your curiosity. All the time you’d been together, you had simply accepted Frederick as an individual, with no need for a childhood backstory or a group of others sharing his features and last name to complete him. You’d gathered, in snippets, that their relationship was not the best, and were satisfied to leave it alone. But he nearly died. The nurse who asked you about his next of kin looked so confused when you had no one you could contact, and it made you feel foolish for never having asked.

“It’s just, we’re going to be married.”

“So?” he said, a hard, mocking edge to his voice.

“So, if I’m going to be part of your family, isn’t it weird that I’ve never met them?”

Instead of answering directly, he snarled, “Look somewhere else.”

“I wasn’t staring!”

“Look. Somewhere. Else.”

You huffed, and sat back in your uncomfortable plastic chair whose unpadded seat bruised your butt after countless hours, crossing your arms. The box full of anger was overstuffed. You shoved its contents down like clothing in a suitcase to squeeze one more sting of hurt inside, but it began to overflow. “I swear I don’t stare at your face any more than I used to,” you muttered aloud what was supposed to remain a thought, “but now every interaction needs to be a carefully calculated balance between not looking at you enough to feel gawked at, and not not-looking enough to make you feel like I’m averting my eyes from your horrible face.” At the word “horrible,” you wiggled your fingers and wavered your voice the way the vampire running a children’s haunted house would say the word “spooky.”

“I am sorry my suffering is so inconvenient for you,” he said in clipped, cold syllables, and you knew you’d pushed him too far.

“I’m just saying, you know I don’t care about your face. You’re acting the same way as when you got shot, and you got over that. You _know_ I still think you’re beautiful. Can’t you give me some credit and just stop freaking out?”

Being stuck in a hospital bed with limited range of motion, he had few resources with which to express anger, but his chest rose and fell and his breath hissed like steam through his nose. “You...” he seethed. “You never care about the pain I suffer, do you? You, in your fantasy world where you accept my injuries and make it _all better_ —you have no idea what it is like to be violated. To have your body ripped apart! It is not a thing one ‘gets over.’ Beautiful? That is rich coming from one who would not know how to tuck in a shirt without my guidance. It must be lovely in whatever quaint children’s storybook your mind inhabits, but in the real world, appearance matters. It matters to me. Your _fetish_ does not stop every sane individual from seeing ugliness. You believe I should be delighted to have a partner who calls ugliness beauty and trivializes my grief? I should have had you analyzed years ago—my judgment was compromised by my relationship with you. I could not see. Your attachment increases with my physical deterioration. You prefer me broken.”

“That… that isn’t true! How dare—”

“You could barely tolerate me before Abel Gideon took my kidney. I was shot in the face and suddenly you professed your love. What shall it be this time? Ah, yes—marriage. You must be elated.” He rolled the words over his tongue in that distinctively upper-class way that was almost musical, yet bone-cuttingly brutal.

“Stop. This had nothing to do with it—you proposed to _me!_ ”

His eyes had been flashing with energy behind the bandages as you argued, but all the anger in them vanished like a message written in steam on a bathroom mirror. They took on a dull, blank glaze.

“Then I take it back,” he said. You wished you believed he meant the accusation. His head shifted toward you, but his dull stare seemed to look right through you to the door. “The engagement is over.”

Your throat dried up. “You don’t mean that,” you said, voice barely above a whisper.

“I will not be with one who gains pleasure from my mutilation. Get out of my room. There are some amputees over in the rehabilitation ward; go explore your fetishes elsewhere.”

He couldn’t be serious, and yet there was no hint of sarcasm or hyperbole in his flat tone. He meant it. You were surprised to find that you weren’t sad. Your hands began trembling uncontrollably, the tiny convulsions working their way from your extremities to your shoulders, tightly clenching in your gut, but it wasn’t sadness. The overfilled box tore open at the seams, exploding its pressurized contents, and weeks of frustration shattered against the walls and cascaded out over the floor.

“Fine!” you stood up from the hated plastic chair so sharply it scraped across the laminate floor and tipped over backward. “I can’t put up with a second more of this, anyway! I can’t keep walking on eggshells waiting for you to snap—if this is the way it’s going to be from now on, then marrying you would be a nightmare.”

If you had seen him flinch as if your words had physically wounded him, then you might have stopped shouting. A surge of pity might have overwhelmed you, and you might have broken down sobbing. He might not have been able to go through with it, then. Seeing you blubbering with heavy, hot tears rolling down your face, he might have said he was sorry, like he wished he could have said if only he were not so much like his father.

But you were too angry to look at him, and you didn’t see him flinch.

So a moment later when your back was in the doorway, instead of I’m sorry, he said, “Keep the ring. Sell it, and get a new apartment. Do not come back.”

“Fuck you!”


	8. Broken

How many days had he been in the hospital? There had been at least one more surgery since you left. More blood transfusions.

It all bled together without you there. There was nothing to distinguish one day from the next except the tedious procedures—a blood test to see how his kidney was holding up, some new skin here, a z-plasty there. He was a little bit glad you were not there when they grafted his penis with a stretchable mesh of skin. God forbid he got aroused while that was healing. He laughed at the thought, as if your absence was just temporary.

The sun outside his window told him whether it was day or night, but the stretches of hours he was knocked out under anesthetic and pain meds made it impossible to know whether it was was from the same day, or if he had slept until the next one. Without your schedule to ground him, it was pointless bothering to find out.

At least you were not always touching him, asking him about his feelings. Staring. He could feel the pressure of your gaze on his face, dancing like jabbing needles across his barely-healed skin. He hated it. He had some peace and quiet now.

It did not feel real yet. It seemed so certain you would be back—you had become such a steadfast presence in his life for the past three years, he never imagined you could leave it. Not forever. It did not seem beyond taking back.

But as much as he was in denial, he knew what he said could not be taken back. One cannot break off an engagement, tell their fiancé to move out, and expect things to ever go back to normal.

He didn’t need you. You always hated his preening, the sophisticated circles he traveled in. You _wanted_ him this way—destroyed and disgusting, unable to pass in decent society. He was not sure if he really believed that, or if he just needed a reason to hate you.

A nurse could bring him the phone. All he had to do was press the nurse call button and Pamela would come running, and he could call you. He could apologize. If he reached you before you got rid of the ring, before you packed your bags, he might be able to convince you to stay.

He did not call.

* * *

The sun was down, whatever day it was. There was still fluorescent light shining in from the hallway, enough to dimly light the room. Frederick lay awake. Parts of his back ached from lying in the same position too long, and it had been too long since a nurse came and shifted him. He shifted himself, what little he could, and the heart monitor climbed frantically with the feeble effort of a few inches. His tight scar tissue pulled like he was wearing too-tight denim over his whole body, and his more recent stitches stung. He was so weak. So pathetically weak.

The sun was up again, some time later. Frederick eyed the small stack of mail for him at his bedside table. You were always the one who read to him. But he did not need you.

He pressed the nurse call button, which had been rigged with tape and a wooden tongue depressor into a large switch he could push more easily with his limited dexterity. He pushed down on it and it buzzed so loudly he swore, a throb of pain shooting through the back of his skull. Part of the jury-rigged switch caught on the gauze mitten wrapped around his hand and left the switch stuck on in a continual buzz. He swore again, more fiercely, and jerked his hand until the makeshift switch snapped, and the call button fell off the edge of the bed. _“Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”_

Where the hell was the nurse? If this had been an emergency he could be dead by now.

In his last physical therapy session, he had been able to reach nearly as far as the bedside table, with assistance. He reached for an envelope, and his mittened hand made it all the way to the edge of the bed before bumping against the metal railing that prevented him from rolling out. That was it. All at once, every latent frustration came out at that goddamned railing in a primal scream. He punched the metal—barely a twitch with his atrophied muscles, but enough to sting his tender fingers and draw another enraged shout. His breathing came in heavy, choked bursts, and he began to sob.

When finally a nurse showed up—his favorite, Pamela—she didn’t make any humiliating sympathetic comments about the tears wetting his face. He asked if you had called or tried to visit.

You had not.

* * *

_The dead at least have the luxury of being done with what they lost._ When he first spoke those words, Frederick was still grateful to have survived everything Hannibal Lecter had done to him. He was no longer certain.

The sky was dark, nearly black with clouds, though Frederick suspected it was day. Heavy rain pummeled against the window, and it gave the room a cold, dreary cast. He wondered if there was a way he could kill himself. To be done. It would have been easy in a hospital, if he had use of his legs and hands—he could tamper with his morphine drip, or find some anesthetic… the options were limitless to one who knew what he was doing with medical equipment.

The one person who never manipulated him into danger, the one person who stood beside him, the one person who loved him completely for everything he was, he had thrown away. Was it worth it staying alive for revenge alone? On the slim chance of seeing Lecter behind bars again? He was never going to get better. Not completely. He would be trapped in this scarred, aching body for the rest of his life. If he died, his will left all of his money to you. Then you would be free.

But he was Doctor Frederick Chilton, damn it! He did not give up. He did not give up after Abel Gideon tortured him, or after being framed for murder and shot. Every time he fell, he held his chin up, and rose higher. This whole incident brought him notoriety, a spotlight he would take advantage of to bring him greater fame than even Hannibal Lecter himself. Forget national bestsellers, this time he was thinking movie deal. In a few years, he would be walking again, he would have a new face, lips. He would have everything back.

Except you.

He could never get back the one thing that already felt like a hole in his life, and would feel like a gaping sinkhole when he finally returned home and you were not there. His comfort. If you were coming back, you would have done it by now.

Every time he angrily demanded you leave, you would always slink off with your tail tucked, but crawl back all sweetness and forgiveness the next day. This time was different. He said so many unforgivable things. But he had to go that far, he told himself—he _had_ to break things off.

He was so bitter, and angry. He was never the easiest man to live with, and now all of his compassion had been burned out of him. You didn’t deserve to keep running back to a cruel, bitter man out of loyalty, to be smothered inside a dark hospital when you were meant to be in the sun. He knew exactly what Chiltons could be like, and he never wanted to put you through that. If that was the nightmare he was turning into, then it was better for you to be far away, not married to it.

But, _oh_ , to touch you one last time…

* * *

Another day. He thought about calling you again, if just to hear the sound of your voice. But what would be the point? You could have called him. Clearly you wanted him out of your life.

A nurse knocked tentatively on the door. Not one of his usual nurses.

“You have a visitor, Mr. Chilton. They said… they’re not sure if you want to see them?”

He perked up immediately, so eager to respond, “Of course I do!” that he didn’t bother to correct the nurse about his title. His face fell when a young black woman walked in, carefully tapping a long white stick across the ground. “Oh. _You._ ”

She stopped in her tracks, a timid expression of guilt written on her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here...” she stammered, turning around.

“No, no, no. Come in, come in, Reba McClane,” he pronounced her name pointedly. “I wanted to speak to you anyway.”

“You did?” She began searching her way closer to his bed.

“Naturally, for my book. An interview with the Tooth Fairy’s lover.”

Her tentative smile quickly turned into a scowl. “Freddie Lounds already offered to tell my story.”

Frederick scoffed. “Tell me you are not considering that libelous _TattleCrime_ gossip rag. I am distinguished, respected author—what I could do with your story is far—”

“I told her the same thing I’m telling you: I do not want my name associated with that man. My entire life is already tainted. I won’t talk about him anymore. I only came to apologize… it seemed the least I could do. You’re the only one of victims left alive to apologize to.”

“You forget to count yourself,” Frederick corrected with uncharacteristic empathy. “We are both his survivors.”

Reba’s shoulders relaxed a little at that. “I wasn’t sure you’d see it that way. A lot of people, they think I knew. Or that I must be a monster to have loved a monster like that. I can’t blame them… I don’t know what to think of _myself_ anymore.”

“There is no accounting for taste.”

Reba and Frederick settled into a surprisingly comfortable chat. She unburdened her guilt—she thought she had sensed someone else in the room that night, and knew something was off, but didn’t call the police—and Frederick magnanimously forgave her. She thanked him for saving her by not calling out for help, but he summarily dismissed the idea that the decision was brave. Dolarhyde would have killed her _and_ slit Frederick’s throat on the spot if he had tried, he was fully certain of that. They talked about love, and the deep vein of cripple’s anger they both shared. Perhaps it set Frederick at ease that she was blind. If she stared, it was not with any regard to his face. 

Then she went to the window, to stand in the warm light streaming through the glass, and knocked over a vase of plastic flowers. He snapped at her, his voice raising with violence so out of proportion to the offense, she wasn’t sure whether to apologize or yell back. After scrambling to find to the vase on the floor, she settled on dryly calling him an asshole.

Nobody had called him out so bluntly since before he was hospitalized, and it made him smile, as best as his cheeks could manage. “You remind me of someone,” he said.

Reba pondered why his voice was so fond at the memory of someone who called him an asshole. She wondered what the flowers meant. “Was this the somebody you were hoping it was when I walked in? Who—”

“Nobody important.”

“Really? That’s not what I’m hearing.”

He sighed grumpily. Then just sighed. “You told Dolarhyde you were not so damaged that you were incapable of love. Do you still feel that way?”

“If you’re looking for relationship advice, I do not believe myself qualified to give any,” she said, reading him like braille. “But I’m not going to give up on the goodness in people. Everybody has a darkness deep down, but not everyone’s darkness is murdering families. I survived Dee, and if I can do that… I can find someone whose darkness is a little softer. Soft enough to live with. I have to believe I can still love—that he didn’t break me. I hope he didn’t break you, either.”

* * *

Another day. He ruined everything with you.

The first question Frederick asked when EMTs found his still-smoldering body—rasping it over and over until someone understood—was if you were safe. Had Dolarhyde gone after his family? But of all the things that the Red Dragon had taken from him, you were the one he had destroyed all on his own. But maybe it was not too late. Maybe he was not too damaged to love.

After two weeks of resisting, he could not bear it anymore. When his physical therapy session ended, he quietly, firmly, with fragile pride, asked the nurse to help him with the phone. He dialed your number, and she held the receiver to his ear as it rang.

It rang.

It went to voicemail.

Frederick leaned into the receiver as your friendly, guileless voice instructed him to leave a message. It must have been recorded before everything, back when you were so happy all the time. It had been ages since he heard you sound like that. He wondered if you would be happy and carefree again soon, without him.


	9. Not Home Without You

The first week you just cried, and slept.

 _I shouldn’t have said that_ , you thought the minute you reached the hospital parking garage. You started to shake as you sank into the driver’s seat. _Did that really happen?_ Then the tears started coming, and didn’t stop.

You crawled into the massive bed that you and Frederick used to share, that had been too big and empty and cold for too long, pulled the covers over your head, cuddled into the spot that used to smell like him, and slept. You slept as though you hadn’t slept in years. You slept until the gnawing in your stomach became too painful to ignore and you had to eat.

There was a picture of you together up on a shelf near the kitchen. Frederick looked so handsome—the scar on his cheek was barely noticeable, and he had that fake, smarmy smile he always put on for cameras. Still, because you were standing next to him with your arm around his back, there was a genuine crinkle in the corners of his eyes that wasn’t there for press photos. You almost smashed it, but you carefully placed it back where it belonged, and smashed a vase instead. Then you lay back in bed again, and slept and cried some more.

You cried so hard you felt sick. Then you did get sick. Work called when you were late, and you said you had the flu, which they believed by the hoarse croak of your voice, though it was more like every toxic pound of stress you’d been holding in for the past month was pouring out of you as in some ancient blood-letting ritual. Your body had been operating beyond its limits, physically and emotionally, for too long, and now everything was crashing.

What would he do if you just didn’t leave? As you stubbornly lay there sweating feverishly and refusing to move, you wondered how long you had before he would even check. He didn’t give you a deadline, just an order to get out. He wouldn’t be so cruel as to kick you out of your own house, would he? Where were you supposed to go?

You opened your laptop and searched for housing in Baltimore, and your head spun. Tiny, ugly apartments that you could barely afford. Maybe you could take that promotion you’d been avoiding because it would require too much travel. Nothing was tying you here anymore—no reason not to travel halfway across the country for weeks at a time. You were free now.

You shut the computer and pulled the blanket back over your head, shaking.

Part of the reason you couldn’t get out of bed was the ocean of sadness you were crushed beneath, which made it difficult to breathe and impossible to _want_ to do anything. The other part was that, in truth, you needed it. You’d been spending so many nights lying awake worrying about whether your fiancé was going to die, waking up so many mornings at the crack of dawn just to see him before work, then going straight from work to the hospital without a break, you’d been on the verge of collapse.

When you finally emerged from the bedroom after a solid week of sleep, your head was clear, and the dark circles living under your eyes had gone.

Finally, you could think straight enough to be truly angry.

Frederick said a lot of things that he didn’t truly mean—rude things, patronizing, demeaning, even cruel. Not _just_ since being hospitalized. He always seemed to make up for it somehow, to the point where you saw it as a cute quirk, and you always forgave him, even when he didn’t say sorry. This may have been one of those times. But he didn’t call to apologize. He didn’t call to check on you. To see if you were OK.

If he didn’t mean it this time, then he didn’t care about you. And you wondered why you ever put up with his bullshit.

Another day went by, and you looked at the picture up on the shelf. How genuinely happy you looked standing next to him and his fake smile and perfect hair, because you saw something in him beyond what the rest of the world could see. You saw the tenderness he safeguarded beneath the pompous mask. The real smile beneath his fake one. Everyone thought he was a patronizing ass, and he could be, but he craved your affection desperately and would go farther than anyone you’d ever known just to show how much he cared.

Everything was different now. He had no way to pompously preen, stuck in hospital robes with nary a tie pin to be seen, and removing his means of vanity had also eviscerated the secret kindness that went with it. The Frederick you knew was gone, and he would ever come back. Not the same as he was. He was too scarred.

The psychological scars were far more frightening than the ones on the outside. Once he was healed and no longer in pain, you wouldn’t mind those. You imagined him wearing a fine suit looking dashingly sinister with his exposed teeth, like a Batman villain. It sent a flush of heat between your legs just picturing it. But apparently that made you a shitty person—you remembered Frederick’s accusations and crossed your arms over your chest, hugging yourself. He wouldn’t be happy until you turned your nose up at him in disgust! Except that would make him miserable, too!

Why the fuck hadn’t he at least called? You wondered if he really did mean it this time.

Days went by. You returned to work and found yourself much more productive than you had been with all the extra sleep, though your stress was getting worse by the day. He still hadn’t called. At this point, you figured he was waiting for you to do it, but you were so tired of being the bigger person. Your entire relationship, you had to be the bigger person. In three years, you could count on one hand the number of times the word “sorry” came out of his mouth. Maybe two hands.

He never said the words, but you would come home to find a gourmet meal being served to you by candlelight. Or rose petals in the bathtub. Sometimes it was just a slow, tender kiss with his thumb brushing against your cheek. Or he would tease every erogenous zone on your body with his feisty tongue until you were shaking with overstimulation.

Now that you thought about it, neither of you were particularly skilled at verbal affection. You were both abrasive and quick with insults, and when you first met, you were like dueling cats yowling and hissing around a trashcan.

How had you managed to win his prickly heart when most of your “conversations” had been arguments? Because you started fucking each other. From that moment, however outwardly you pretended to loathe each other, you were both so cuddly you could hardly bear being separated. No matter what stupid, infuriating jeers he made during the day, you always wanted to wake up in the morning tucked under his arm, your face buried in a chest full of soft brown hair, smelling his intoxicating musk and day-old cologne. Even when you gave up being nemeses, touch was your first love-language. Laying his head in your lap while you read a book. His hand on the small of your back keeping you close at a big event. Combing your fingers through his thick hair. For every sarcastic little snipe, there was a gentle kiss to set everything right.

You couldn’t touch him. For over a month, his skin was too raw to be touched, and for over a month, all you’d had for physical contact was the slightest pressure over thick gauze—and even that was enough to make him wince.

Frederick was changed forever, and he was an asshole. But things might not have been as hopeless or forever-altered as you feared. Not being able to touch (combined with excruciating pain and trauma) had thrown your relationship out of balance, and that was a temporary problem.

Fuck it. You’d be the goddamn bigger person. Considering how much he’d suffered in one lifetime, he could have a free pass on being a dick. You may have said a few… _inconsiderate_ things yourself.

The only thing you were afraid of was that he really did want you out of his life forever. Though you’d made up your mind you were going to see him and try to put things back together, the dread that your visit would only confirm once and for all that things were over made you put off the trip for another two days.

* * *

Your feet knew every turn and corridor to get to Frederick’s room so well by now, they could bring you there by muscle memory alone, dodging around busy doctors and nurses on autopilot. You slowed down and hesitated as you approached the door to his recovery room, holding your chest to quell the throbbing.

He might not want to see you. If his eyes met you with a scowl, your heart would break in two right there.

Stealthily, you tip-toed up to the door so your shoes wouldn’t make audible approaching footsteps, and you peeked in the little rectangular window. A curly-haired nurse was helping him lift his arms, stretching upward as high as he could manage. He gasped out little curses of pain until she released, and he sighed with relief.

“Good job today, Fred. We’ll work on that a few times a day for now, and then we’ll build on it, OK?” She patted his shoulder.

 _Oh, she’s in trouble_ , you grinned with schadenfreude, waiting for him to go nuclear at her for calling him “Fred.” But the explosion never came.

“Thank you, Pamela,” he smiled.

Flipping over to press your back against the wall, you clutched your chest tighter. He knew her _name?_ He didn’t even know the names of half the nurses on his own staff! He used to pretend to forget yours, long after it wasn’t funny.

Worst of all, he looked _happy._

He was happy without you. The smile he gave her was brighter than you’d seen him look at you in ages. You thought he would be agonizing over the breakup, but he was doing better since you were gone. You calmed your breathing, and poked your head over the lip of the window again. Now she was leaning down, and he was hugging her. Your throat started to close, and the backs of your eyes burned. It felt like the time you were in first grade when you fell off the playground monkey bars and landed flat on your back. All the wind had been knocked out of your lungs and you couldn’t breathe—you lay on the woodchips in a daze of confusion, mouth gaping like a fish, unable to comprehend why you couldn’t draw in air, and certain you were going to die.

Before you broke down in the middle of the hall, you turned to go home. 

_No, not home_ , you corrected yourself. _Not anymore._


	10. Reunion

As you turned to leave, the door opened suddenly and struck you on the rump, nearly sending you sprawling on the hard laminated floor.

“Oh! Excuse me,” said the startled nurse, who, upon seeing who you were, greeted you loudly and deliberately by name. “Here to see Frederick?” she asked, holding the door wide open for you while klaxons blared up and down the corridors of your mind and your anxiety banged pots and pans together.

It didn’t matter what you answered at that point. Frederick was staring straight at you.

The nurse patiently held the door until you nodded politely and entered. Then she let it shut behind you, and you and Frederick were alone.

The room was silent except for the hum and beep of machinery. The air between you was still, but felt laced with invisible barbed wire, as if crossing the distance to his bedside was a treacherous task to be undertaken with extreme caution, and not just a handful of feet you could close in two strides. You scuffed your heel against the floor and cleared your throat. Neither of you wanted to speak first.

“Hi.”

“It is good to see you,” Frederick said, following your stiff tone.

“Is it?” you replied too quickly, too much frustration slipping into your voice by accident. Your heart skipped several beats at the thought that it might be true—that he _was_ glad to see you. The possibility gave you hope. “It’s good to see you, too,” you said.

“I doubt that,” he said dryly. “I am hardly a sight for sore eyes.”

Your lower lip pressed up against the upper one, unable to believe he had the nerve to be self-deprecating as you came to extend an olive branch, when the entire fight was about his appearance! “Shut up. Idiot.” The snap to your tone was undercut by a low waver in its pitch.

“A pleasure to hear the delicate birdsong of your voice.”

 _Sarcastic asshole._ Your shoulders shook with laughter at the familiar banter: his words dripping with playful condescension, but without the cutting edge of cruelty that had seeped into them recently. He was so charming when he was like this. You wanted him to be yours again—to be exchanging little barbs with him forever. Talking to him felt so familiar, but standing in front of the door with a field of invisible wires between you and the bed, unsure if this would be the last time, the heaving of your shoulders broke into a sob. You wiped your eyes, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

His eyes watched you with unwavering focus, though it was difficult to tell what emotion he was feeling.

“So, what’s this?” You risked a step closer to nod at the new material fitted tightly over his head and hands. It hadn’t been there when you last saw him, but you managed to hide the sting in your voice that things were happening in his treatment you were not aware of, and asked with genuine curiosity.

“Pressure garments,” he answered just as factually. “To reduce scarring. Now that my skin has healed enough to tolerate the shearing, I have been instructed not to remove them longer than an hour per day.” His eyes rolled in annoyance. “I shall be looking into more fashionable alternatives as soon as possible, of course. I feel as though I am wearing a gimp suit made of women’s shapewear.”

You bit back another laugh, because that _was_ exactly what it looked like he was wearing, and if you laughed again, you would definitely break down crying.

“I see you started physical therapy...” Your small-talk was growing strained. The distance between your bodies too wide. “...since I’ve been gone.”

He flinched at the word “gone,” as if you’d simply been away on vacation and not coarsely thrown out and told not to come back. All the anger he’d stuffed down like a knot in his diaphragm had long since loosened and been replaced by guilt, and the stark realization of his own failure.

“I… have missed you,” he said slowly, his longing for you overtaking his stubborn pride. His already-exhausted arm reached out to you, as far it physically could. It was pitifully narrow and trembling with the effort of extending. His arms used to be surprisingly thick and strong for a priggish little man his size, but after nearly two months of laying in the same position and being metabolized by his own body as it healed itself, they were skeletal. And your heart lurched.

It no longer mattered if the distance was trapped with barbed wire or planted with hidden minefields. Your thin façade of indifference crumbled, and you threw yourself at the side of his bed, head falling onto the mattress under his gesturing hand just as tears began to flow. His arm sagged, drained of energy, to rest in your hair.

“I missed… you too… dummy...” you choked out between sobs. “Why did you… why did you….” You couldn’t manage to form the question around the lump in your throat, losing yourself in shaking. His gloved fingers moved in your hair, almost stroking it, though the movements were too weak and stilted. But he was trying, and you knew he was trying, and that made it feel better than any time he’d ever curled his fingers in your hair before.

His fingers paused their motion, and you wondered if he was about to confirm your fears and tell you to leave again. His chest rose and fell with a deep, preparatory breath. Then he whispered, “I should never have pushed you away. I was afraid you would never speak to me again,” he admitted, slow and hoarse. He glanced surreptitiously at your finger. His eyesight was blurry and poor at close distance, especially with tears swimming in his vision, but he did not see a trace of the gold band he told you to sell.

Peeling your wet face off the sheets, you gently grasped his hand in both of yours and pressed your lips to his fingers. “No, I should never have left like that. I’m sorry I took so long to come back. What you’re going through… it’s normal to be angry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I never said I was sorry,” he said, teeth clicking together in a slight underbite, as if he were trying to press his lips into a bored slant. You stopped kissing his hand and narrowed your eyes at him. He looked a bit shocked at his own mouth’s behavior when all he wanted to do was be overwhelmed by your forgiveness, his watery eyes widening in fear of your reaction. The next terrified, but genuine, words out of him were, “I _am._ I am sorry.”

“You could have called me.”

“I know.”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” you cocked your head with a half-smiling expression lost somewhere between pleased with how well you understood his quirks and annoyed. An hour ago, you would have said annoyed. Right now, you were leaning toward the former.

“Then you were mistaken. I did call. You did not answer,” he flipped the blame to you.

“When?”

“A moment ago.”

“Really?” You groaned, pulling your phone out of your pocket and showing him the black screen. “It’s off. Hospital rules.”

A huff of laughter hissed through his teeth. He was about to give up all hope of reconciliation when you did not answer his call, but it was because you were _here._ It was incredible and silly how quickly a day can turn around. “Pam told me not to read into it going to voicemail...”

Pam. That nurse. You must have made a very obvious face, and Frederick must have seen it as broad as daylight, because a creeping smirk pulled at his cheeks, making his permanent grimace even wider, his eyes narrowed deviously.

“Are you _jealous?_ ”

“No!”

“You ought to be,” he insinuated. “She was wonderful after my ordeal with Abel Gideon. I tried to tempt her to come work for me, know you. But she is a stubborn woman. She likes _helping people,_ and apparently a hospital incarcerating the criminally insane does not qualify.”

“It isn’t fair to rub salt in my wounds when I can’t punish you for your insolence,” you grumbled. His brow darted upward under the mask with keen interest at the prospect of _punishment._

The flirtation was mainly performative—he was far from well enough for any kind of sexual performance, and even the idea of it, at this point, made his gut squirm uncomfortably—but it set you at ease and put on a smile on your lips that he adored.

This was another part of your relationship that had been missing while Frederick was recovering. The sinful little promises in a glance, innuendo in the tone of your voice. Things had been considerably less romantic lately, but suddenly it was like he was seeing everything as it used to be, all of the wonderful, exciting, sensual moments he had callously given up. He had shattered that old life. This was merely a lovely pantomime of it, a moment of nostalgia that would soon be over. And suddenly, his flirtatious brow sank back to its usual place, and he became sullen and still.

“I wish that… I could take it all back. That we could return to the way we were before.”

You hesitated. This would be when you would normally have hugged him tight to your chest, but you still were not sure how much physical contact he could take, and you desperately did not want to hurt him. You risked leaning so your upper body was resting halfway on the bed, and you could cuddle as close as you could without really touching. You looked him deeply in the eye, hoping, with a pinprick of pain, that he would not turn sour and accuse you of staring again. “Darling… I know things will be different now, but you’re getting better. It’s hard to see the progress because you’re here every day, but I’ve been gone two weeks, and all of a sudden your skin is healed enough to wear this… this _Spanx_ ski mask, and you’re doing PT. Things won’t be the same, but they’ll be good again soon.”

“Between _us,_ ” he pressed the meaning you had not taken. “Things between us cannot simply return to normal. What are we to one another now? Ex-fiances? I wish it were possible to go back to before I ended our relationship.” His voice was thick and mournful, eyes cast low, like he was giving a eulogy.

“Why can’t we?”

Frederick was taken aback by that. It was so obvious, anyone who had not been raised by wolves like you apparently had should understand it implicitly. “One cannot break off an engagement and simply take it back.”

“Why?”

“Because!” he cried, as if that in itself was an explanation. “I have failed you, hurt you. Proven my lack of commitment. One may glue a shattered glass back into the approximate shape of a glass, but it will always have sharp edges and missing pieces. It will leak. Its surface will be marred with cracks. Most people find, when they have shattered a glass, it is easier to throw it away.”

“That is the saddest thing I have ever heard, Frederick. And you have clearly never heard of _kintsugi,_ ” you said. Frederick looked confused, and you briefly considered telling him to just fucking google it when he could hold a smartphone again, but just sighed and quickly explained, “It’s the Japanese philosophy of repairing pottery with gold so it becomes more beautiful and precious the more it’s damaged. It’s an overused cliché, but it’s way better than your morbid fucking glass—and need I remind you _we are not dishware._ ”

Frederick stared, unable to come up with words for once in his life. You sat up. The hard plastic chair—your old frenemy—had been pushed out of the way in the corner of the room. You dragged it to the side of the bed so you could sit and hold Frederick’s elastic-gloved hand, and get out of the awkward crouch you had been in.

Soft and uncertain, afraid of the answer, you gathered the courage to ask, “Do you want me to be here? Do I just make things worse?”

“You are all that makes my days bearable,” he croaked. “If your presence worsens my mood, it is only in seeing you mired down in the darkness with me. Your brightness should not be dimmed on my account, but I am selfish. I would gladly drag you down only to have you by my side as I drown.”

“Then you do want to take it back? The breakup?” you asked, head swimming with hope. “You want to un-break up.”

“I do, but—”

“Good! So do I. It’s done,” you said, laughing through tears. “That’s all there is to it.”

A tear fell from Frederick’s green eye, and another pooled dangerously close to spilling on the lower lid of the sightless blue one. That could not be all there was to it. It could not be so easy getting the love of his life back. His head trembled side to side, and you could tell he was about to protest.

“We are not fragile dishware.” You squeezed his hand gently. “We can decide to be whole again, and it will happen. I don’t care if there are supposed to be rules—if I’m supposed to feel betrayed and never trust you again. I don’t care. I am of the opinion that you should do whatever you feel like doing, and all I want is to live in your house, and steal your snacks. I want to sleep beside you every night, in our bed, and argue with you over stupid little things every day. I want you to push my buttons and rile me up, and help me relax and make me try new things. I want to make you feel safe. And I want to fuck you senseless. So if I want to, and you want to, then why don’t we?”

Frederick’s breaths were coming out erratically, and it was all you could do not to scoop him up in a full-body hug. “You will also have to stand my bitterness and abuse,” he added cynically. “You left that out.”

“No,” you leaned in close to the bump of his ear under the tight fabric. “Another great thing about not being pottery is that we can change when something isn’t working. We’re going to find some better way for you to cope than taking it out on me, because that sucks.” You leaned back with a satisfied grin, “But I don’t mind if you’re a pain in the ass sometimes—that’s the man I fell in love with. I love you, Frederick. Just love me, too, and it will be alright.”

“Just like that?” he asked, a challenge his tone, despite the hoarseness of held-back tears in his timbre.

“Just like that.”

“Should I not be in the proverbial dog house?”

“Frederick, you’re already in the literal hospital; no point making you sleep on the figurative couch.”

“The couch would be a marked improvement,” he admitted.

“Well, not _just_ like that,” you said, sitting up from the side of the bed and putting your weight back in the chair. “There is one thing to do before we can be engaged again.” You dabbed the corners of your eyes and sniffed deeply to clear any remaining nasal drip. Frederick watched you anxiously as you reached into your bag to grab something. You pulled out a small, square, black velvet box and opened it, displaying its contents. Inside was a gold ring matching yours, but more ornate, with a few more diamond embellishments, and attached to a gold chain.

“What is this?” Frederick whispered.

“The ring. The one the EMTs had to cut off of you. I took it to the jeweler and had it soldered back together. It’s on a chain so you can wear it until your hands are healed enough.” His heart fluttered as you dropped to one knee beside the bed and held the box aloft. “Frederick Chilton, will you marry me?”

He welled with emotion, and for a few moments—long enough for your knee on the hard floor to begin to pinch—the only sounds he could make were hitched breathing as he fought not to cry. “Damn you!” he cursed through wet eyes, “It is not fair, asking that when I cannot kiss you...”

“Your answer?”

“And what if I never walk again? What if this is life, forever?”

“Then I love you, and I want to be with you.”

“It is not enough!” he shouted, practically snarling with vicious intent, but not toward you. _Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him. You do not have the proper stuff, Frederick._ He remembered Hannibal’s words to him the day before the Dragon burned him. It was so easy for Dr. Lecter to strike surgically at the deepest and oldest wounds. Now he was even less than he was that day.

“You are enough, Frederick,” your soft voice insisted, still holding up the ring and looking at him like your heart might break. “You’ve always been enough. You always will be. Please, marry me.”

“I am not an idiot,” he grumbled, light shining softly in his eyes. “Of course I will marry you.”

The truth was, he was still conflicted. As you smiled and wept and clasped the delicate gold chain around his neck, putting your own back on your finger, he thought of so many reasons he was unhealthy for you, so many things he should tell you. But he was selfish, and being with you felt good. It felt like breathing when he’d been deprived of oxygen. And pushing you away had been selfish, too. Maybe you were right, and the only thing that mattered was that he loved you. Because he did. He loved you more than he had ever loved anything.

“I need to touch you,” he whined, desperation in his voice, his arms shifting by helpless inches. “Please touch me?”

“Where can I touch you? How do you want to be touched?” You looked to him for guidance, and he explained the few painful spots with more severe or recent scars. Everywhere else was still tender, but healed enough to tolerate pressure and light caresses.

“I cannot do much in return,” he lamented, “but you may put your arms around me if it pleases you.” With some embarrassment, which would have reddened his cheeks if they were not already red with inflammation and hidden, besides, he added, “… I would… enjoy that.”

You complied readily, with a contented sigh, uttering soft praise and oaths of love as you crawled into the small bed with as much of your body as you could squeeze in beside him. It was a tight fit, but Frederick had fewer wires and tubes coming out of him than before, and every little jostle no longer caused him agonizing pain. His body felt so warm pressed close against yours, and the warmth spread out through your chest, multiplying itself like embers hopping from one dry leaf to the next, soothing every muscle until they were melting off your bones. You wrapped your arm around him and gave him a gentle squeeze, relishing the happy little moan it elicited as Frederick melted into you.

The air in the room was still and quiet except for the hum of machinery. But it was a comfortable, sleepy sort of quiet this time, laced with steady breathing and barely-audible whines as you cuddled into him.

“It’s amazing to be able to touch you again,” you whispered, smoothing your palm up and down his bandaged side.

He hummed in agreement, eyes closed. But he frowned at a thought that plagued him even through his dreamy happiness. “I want more,” he growled, pleading to a higher power. “I am too impatient to wait a year to do such simple things as holding you. _Walking._ ” Frederick’s body trembled. “Touching my skin without it burning is progress worthy of celebration?” he spat in frustration, then took in a long breath and held it to calm down. “My anger is not directed at you, dear. Sorry.”

“I know,” you breathed, tightening your grip around him, and releasing quickly when he gave a sharp hiss. “I hate it, too. I hate waiting,” you commiserated. Your hand skimmed over his chest, careful of the places he had warned you to avoid. It killed you needing to be so cautious when you wanted to climb on top of him and ride him into oblivion. But that would be a long way off. So you celebrated every little victory. Each new thing he could do that he couldn’t yesterday.

You kissed down his bandaged side and over his arm. Between his new compression glove and the bandages encasing his elbow, there was a bare patch of exposed skin. It was discolored, still reddened, and scarred, but looked intact. You pressed a kiss to it, warm beneath your lips. He shuddered, and exhaled slowly.

“Can you feel that?” you asked.

“Yes,” he breathed. “I have missed this.”

You wished there was more exposed skin for you to kiss. You glanced at his face. His mouth was uncovered. His mangled lip stubs gave a ghastly impression over his pearly white teeth, though you would never admit to him that you thought so. However gruesome they looked, the only reason you hadn’t kissed them yet was that they were badly injured where they’d been bitten off. It had not been a clean cut in any sense, the uneven tearing and bruising an impediment to the recovery of the wound’s edge. But if his face was fitted with this compression mask, then his mouth must have been healed enough. As you inspected the jagged flesh, you concluded that it was as sound as the skin on his arm.

A strange look came over Frederick, cagey and watery-eyed, and you knew he was holding in the urge to snap at you for staring, terrified of pushing you away again.

“Can I kiss you?” you whispered, lowering your mouth close enough to breathe his air, but waiting for his approval. His pupils blew wide with longing, eyes darting over your lips, and his tongue ran along the inside of his teeth.

“Is that a joke?” he let out a huff of cynical laughter. “You do not need to prove your devotion with these… displays of willingness to do the revolting.”

“It’s not a joke! I want to kiss you. You are not revolting, you’re the man I want to spend my life with.”

“God, you are serious. That paraphilia of yours,” he tutted, teasing you. The sides of his eyes tilted, and he fixed you with a sober, sincere gaze—the deepest he had let you look into his eyes, for fear of being this close to his face, since being maimed. The green one was still that perfect, warm crystalline color of the crest of a wave curling toward Assateague Island. The blinded eye was a pure blue now, as if he had the North Atlantic in one eye and a Caribbean beach in the other. But you couldn’t blame him for not finding the beauty in his injuries. “No,” he said. “I am not ready for that.”

“OK,” you nodded.

His eyes caressed your face lovingly, since he could not do it with his hands. “I would like it if you held me more,” he suggested, voice thick with his desire to feel you. You kissed his wrist once more, slowly, savoring the feel of his skin on your lips, then settled yourself beside him again. You lowered your head onto his shoulder, careful not to put too much weight down, and draped an arm over his chest. Fredrick let out a vulnerable whine as he relaxed, and it nearly burst your heart.

One day, you would kiss him again. One day, you would have everything back. But it would be one day at a time. For now, this—laying beside him in his cramped hospital bed, nearly dozing—was enough.

This was plenty.


End file.
